


Dammit, Sammy, It's Christmas! Or How Dean Winchester Became the Ghost of Christmas Present

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Curtain Fic, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, More Fluff, Schmoop, Sick Sam Winchester, Swearing, Wincest - Freeform, probably a lot more fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2706116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam never really liked Christmas, never really got the point, but Dean's decided it's high time he got with the program.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. December 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm feeling pretty low this holiday season, just kinda trying to remember why in the heck I go to all the trouble, so I decided that I would pose myself a challenge. This is kind of a journal told from Sam's POV through the month of December, siting all the little and sometimes ridiculous, sometimes sweet, ways that Dean tries to improve his outlook on Christmas. Hopefully, by the time I'm done, I'll have remembered myself, just what it's all supposed to be about.
> 
> ADDITIONAL: I decided to try present tense mid-stream, so please forgive any tense slips in the first few chapters. I had to do some editing and I don't use this tense very often. And I HATE writing that can't keep it's tenses straight. So, apologies ahead of time. :)

I don’t like Christmas. That’s no secret. I’ve never really gotten the point. It’s not like we’ve ever been religious or anything—offing creatures of the night along with angels and demons and the like kind of kills off that suspension of disbelief that I always kind of thought was a prerequisite for religion. Not to mention that my brother and I know for a fact that God, while he exists, hasn’t been home for quite some time. Beyond that, it’s always just been a lot of noise, and advertisement, and overdone shop windows, and tired old Christmas songs.

Dean’s tried to convince me otherwise over the years, and I feel a little bad for him. I really do. He was old enough to remember Christmas’ at home before what happened with Mom. And being four years old, he has this magical image still lodged in his head that he never really grew out of. It was like all those years without Christmas, or the half-assed efforts that Dad sometimes made, were just little tide-me-overs because of us being on the road all the time. That same four year old was always waiting for the stopping point, for the place we would finally settle and call home, so that we could celebrate all those holidays again and go back to our ‘normal’ lives. As much as I wanted out of this life once upon a time, swearing that I would live that ‘normal’ life one way or another, it’s been Dean whose kept the faith in that idea all these years.

Needless to say, by the time December rolled around this year, I’d already been putting up with Christmas for nearly a month every time we ventured from the bunker for a job or supplies or just a little time away; and when I come home from one said supply run to restock a few of the rarer commodities we carry around in the trunk in case of emergency, I'm well and truly worked up.

“Hey, Sam,” Dean says as he walks by me with his coffee and the morning paper.

“Go to hell,” I mutter as I dump the contents of my shopping excursion on the table.

Dean stops in his tracks, coffee half way to his lips. “Been there, thanks,” he says with a smirk, “But, whoa. What’s got the burr up your butt?”

I swear softly and drag a hand through my hair. “Sorry. Guess I’m just being pissy.”

“Really? Ya think?” he says, tossing the paper on the table and coming over to me. He thumbs my cheek and smiles, softening his next words. “What’s up, little brother?”

“Just…I don’t know. Just. Everything!” I say, jerking back a chair and dumping myself into it. I know I’m being childish, but I can’t help it right at the moment. 

Dean perches a hip up on the table and sets his coffee off to the side. “Okay. You’re gonna have to be a little more specific. What? Did Mindy try to set you up on another date, or something?”

I blow air through my lips and roll my eyes. Mindy runs the new age place in town that fronts the supply shop for Hunters like Dean and me. She’s nearly forty, but don’t try and tell her that. She’s single and as happy as can be about it, but that doesn’t mean she thinks that life is ideal for everyone else. Especially me. It’s kind of hard to tell her I’m already taken when it’s my own brother I’ve been taken by—since a very long time ago. Hippy, new age, open mindedness aside, there are some social standards that just run too deep. 

“No, she didn’t,” I say, sounding just like the five year old whose behavior I’m imitating at the moment. 

“What then?”

I groan, thrust my hand into the paper bag I’d dropped on the table, fish around a bit and come out with a small package wrapped in shiny paper with snowflakes on and floofy white bow. I hold the thing like it’s the sheddings of a skinwalker, between two fingers, and Dean has to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing. He covers his mouth with his hand, but if he thinks I have’t deciphered that smile of his as the indulgent tease that it is, he’s wrong.

I chuck the package at his chest and he has to scramble to catch it, rubbing absently where the corner pokes him. “She tried to _gift wrap_ the Nanja root.”

“Apparently she accomplished it,” Dean says, still trying to suppress a smile. He turns the package back and forth. “Nice job.”

I grind my teeth. “That’s the powered ram’s hoof.”

“Ah.” Dean drops the box back into the bag and scoots closer to me. “Sam, I know you’re not cracked about the holidays, but it’s just paper, and she meant well. You’ve gotta let other people have their kicks, ya know?” He smacks me lightly on the shoulder. “And that coming from me! That’s supposed to be _your_ line.”

I sit forward and begin absently tracing lines on the top of Dean’s hand thats was flattened on the table. “I know. You’re right. I just get frustrated I guess. It doesn’t meant anything! None of it means anything. Can’t they see that?”

Dean coveres my hand, stopping my movements and trapping it between his. He looks at me very solemnly. “After everything they’ve seen and been through? Sammy. We should be grateful that they can’t see it. What kind of a world do you suppose it would be if people knew the real truth?”

I shrug my ambivalent understanding. Dean ruffles my hair.

“Come on, little bro’. I’ll help you stash this stuff and then we can go digging through that storeroom I uncovered last week.” He stands up, grabs his coffee and starts to walk away, tossing over his shoulder, “I think I saw some boxes labeled Christmas decorations!”

I throw him an evil glare to which he reciprocates with a laugh of the kind I never get to hear too often anymore—the kind that says he’s temporarily forgotten the world outside and the life we live, and for just a few seconds he’s that carefree little kid again. I smile grudgingly when he turns a corner, sweep the bag off the table and follow after him.


	2. December 2

Subtle, Dean. Real subtle.

Actually, I have to congratulate him on that subtlety. Dean isn’t one to tap you with a tack hammer when he could hit you over the head with a sledge. Maybe I merit special treatment because I’m his brother. Maybe he just doesn’t want to put up with my shit if he pisses me off. Either way, he’s accomplishing what I’d originally thought impossible for Dean Winchester.

We usually keep a stack of coffee cups by the carafe in the kitchen. I’s endlessly collecting them throughout the day as Dean fills one after another and leaves them in some random spot, on a bookshelf, sitting precariously on the edge of the colossal computer console in what we’ve come to call the ‘think tank’ since it’s the room where the bunker’s central systems are located, or sitting on a priceless 5th century clay tablet…

Anyway. I stumble into the kitchen this morning, scrubbing the sleep out of the corners of my eyes and root for a cup blindly to be met with nothing. I glance down at the empty tray and groan. “Really, Dean?”

Dean glances over his shoulder, not taking his full attention from the bacon he’s frying. “What?” he says innocently.

I flap a hand at the complete absence of coffee cups and then trudge to the cabinet to try and find something to drink out of. “Would it kill you to clean a few cups,” I grump.

“To your right,” Dean says as I reach for the cupboard door.

I leave off the door in front of me and yank open the one next to it a little harder than necessary. Sitting on the shelf at eye level, well, Dean’s eye level anyway, are eight new ceramic mugs. There are four each in green and red, and it isn’t the eyesore candy apple red and bright Kelly green that gets so overused during the holidays. They are a darker burgundy and something close to blue spruce, with thin gold rings around the edge at top and bottom.

I pull one down and stare at it. To my left, Dean is pointedly keeping his eyes on the skillet. I slide a look his direction, my lips pressed together against the first snide remark that comes to mind. They could have been candy striped or in the shape of reindeer and Santa faces, or had the words ‘Merry Christmas’ plastered across them in 100pt type. Given the source, this is almost a sweet gesture.

I pull two down and top them off at the carafe, handing one across to Dean who’s plating the bacon on a layer of paper towels. He takes the mug and breathes in the dark aroma steaming off the surface then looks over the edge at me as he sips, eyebrow arched in query. 

I shrug a little, lifting the mug to finger at the gold trim around the bottom, and then take a sip, grimacing at the bitterness when I realize I’ve forgotten to add creamer. Dean grins, eyes sparkling, and reaches behind him. 

A plastic container of powdered creamer appears in front of my nose. The label declares it to be peppermint, with a picture of candy canes and sprigs of holly and ribbon artfully laid out around a china cup and saucer.

“Don’t push your luck,” I say, lip lifting in a half snarl, then swipe the container from his hand and dumped a liberal amount into my black coffee. 

Dean’s grin nearly splits his face.

 


	3. December 7

It’s Sunday morning. My body is aching like it hasn’t in a long, long time as I roll over to an empty spot in the bed that’s already grown cold from Dean’s absence.

We’ve been in Florida the last four days. Dean caught wind of a nest of vamps down that way, and when he dialed up the local hunter, found that the guy had been laid up pretty bad by a zombie hunt last month and could really use a little help. Naturally, we agreed. 

It was a pretty big nest. 

And we aren’t exactly young pups anymore.

Yeah, I know, I’m only thirty-three, but Hunter’s years are kind of like dog years because of all the damage we do to ourselves, so it feels a lot more like sixty-three as I try to roll out of bed and get up to go take a pee. 

We got in about midnight (I think) and as far as I know, our gear is still in the car. We didn’t even bother with showers after a fourteen hour stint on the road. So, yeah, the sheets are gonna need changed today, but that’s no big deal. They can go in with the rest of the laundry from the trip.

I scrub at the two day stubble on  my face and squint into the mirror at the bruises around my throat that have already started to age into a gruesome green on the drive home. I’m sure I have matching sets on my back from where one of the vamps tossed me like a rag doll into a couple of steel tool cabinets in the warehouse where they were holed up. I swear softly and poke at an ugly looking gash across my collarbone that I don’t quite remember getting and could probably have used at least a few Steri-strips, but it’s too late now. 

I lean back to take in a little more of my reflection. Maybe Dean is right. I need to quit with all the rabbit food, or at least take after his example and scarf a few more burgers. I’ve never really gotten back to my fighting weight after the trials were over, and maybe the vamps wouldn’t have such an easy time throwing me around if I had a bit more on my bones.

I shake my head and turn on the tap, reaching for my toothbrush.

What I come up with is a candy cane. 

I stare at the sugary striped shepherd’s crook in my hand, and look down at the cup that usually holds our toothbrushes but is now full of these offending Christmas treats.

“Dean!” I let his name drag out on a dangerously threatening note that I know will carry down the myriad hallways of the bunker, and I can imagine the unconscious flinch across his shoulders even as he grins from ear to ear at his little prank. 

I stalk out of our room and down the hall, following sounds of soft swearing and the rustling of what sounds like…tree branches?

Dean is at the top of the iron stairs to the bunker’s front door, a length of rope twined around his arm and an enormous evergreen tree dangling from the other end. I stare bug-eyed.

“What the hell is that?” I say.

Dean looks up with a grin, eyeing the candy cane still clenched in my fist. “What does it look like, little brother?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Had it delivered…Friday.” He grunts as he lets the rope slide over his arm and lowers the tree down a little more. I know there are long, deep lacerations under his coat sleeve and that what he’s doing must sting like a son-of-a-bitch, but the other arm is in worse shape, so he’s picked the lesser of two evils, and though I could probably stop standing here staring, I’m still really pissed over the candy cane collection in our bathroom, my missing toothbrush, and now what is obviously a soon to be Christmas tree dangling over the railing.

I don’t move to help.

“I’m just glad it’s been damp and rainy,” Dean continues. “I forgot about it when we left, but it doesn’t look too dried out. I think it’ll be fine.”

I watch as he gets the tree slowly lowered down and laying on its side then comes clambering down to untangle the rope like a little kid to unwrap his first present on Christmas day. I swipe casually at my mouth with the back of my hand to hide my smile. “So, tree stand?”

“Huh?”

“Did you get a tree stand?” I ask.

Dean frowns a moment. “Shit. I didn’t think of that.” He looks the tree up and down for a few seconds. “Well, I’ll figure something out.”

I sigh heavily, look down at the candy cane in my fist, smile despite myself, then, “Let me get a shower and get some coffee. Then we can go into town and see if we can find a tree stand.”

Dean’s eyes light up brighter than any tree topper I’ve ever seen and his grin is positively giddy. I find myself smiling broader. As I turn away, I say,

“Go strip the bed, and get the bags out of the trunk.” I pause a fraction at the door to the library. “And make me some coffee…with that peppermint creamer.”

I can nearly _feel_ the warmth of Dean’s smile across my back as I walk away.

——

Just because I deigned to come along does not mean I’m going to endure the crush of weekend Christmas shoppers. I tell Dean to go in without me and get the tree stand at the local hardware store and ban him from buying any of the bogo Christmas decorations advertised out front.

I thumb through the local news on my phone while I’m waiting until my ears are caught by an excited squeal, and I look up. A young couple are coming out of the store with a clerk trailing behind headed for the corral of Christmas trees off to the side of the parking lot. The young woman is dressed in jeans and work boots and a leather coat, her dark brown hair whips in the wind, catching on her huge smile as she lifts a small child high in the air and coos to her. The child, infant really, spreads her arms and giggles and shrieks excitedly as her mother swings her around, the little fur balls on her tan leather, fur lined, coat bouncing and tickling her when they swing up against her rosy cheeks. She has on tiny earmuffs and little knitted mittens that may have been a homemade gift from a grandmother. The young man is grinning broadly at his small family and pointing out a full blue spruce that the clerk is holding up for examination. The woman leans close to smell the branches and nods her approval. The infant reaches out and bats at the needles, grinning and giggling again. 

The creak of Dean’s door jolts me out of my observation and sends my phone sliding into the floor when I jump in surprise. I turn my head and see that Dean has come out laden with two large paper bags.

“I said no decorations!”

Dean looks innocent as he loads the bags into the backseat. “I didn’t! It’s just the stand and some lights. I swear.”

I mumble and grouse about cheap strings of lights that always have a bulb out and never fail to get tangled as Dean slides in behind the wheel. The infant’s giggle floats across the parking lot again, and I look over to see her reaching high above her head to a shiny star tree topper that her father is holding above her. She looks very happy.

“You okay?” Dean asks.

I feel his hand on my arm, a light touch, one that would turn comforting in an instant if that’s what I needed. I smile a little at that thought. He’s so predictable, and that’s so nice sometimes. I feel his finger under my chin, pulling my face toward him. His eyes are concerned.

“Hey, what’s this?” he asks, and I feel his thumb run under my eye.

I glance down at the wet tear on the pad of his thumb when he pulls it away. I hadn’t realized I been crying, nor could I really pin down why.

The infant shrieks in delight, and Dean looks past me out the window and grins. “She’s adorable. I saw her in the store. She was helping her mom pick out Christmas decorations.”

I roll my eyes and swipe backhandedly at them to catch any other stray tears. “She’s too little to know what a Christmas decoration is, Dean.”

“She’s a kid. It’s in her DNA,” he protests, still smiling as he follows her movements. “Kids love bright shiny things, and Christmas is all about bright and shiny.”

“Whatever,” I say, but my gaze has tracked back to the little girl. Her earmuffs have slipped loose and I can see that her mother has her fine baby hair in pigtails secured with bright blue and gold bows. She really is a beautiful little thing.

“You sure you’re okay?” Dean’s focus has come back to me, and he’s sliding his gaze between me watching the young family and watching them directly as they choose their tree and have it bundled to take home.

“Yeah, I’m good.” I tear my gaze away and bend over to search for my phone where it’s slid back under the seat. 

“Sammy…”

“Dean,” I say exasperated, “just—let’s go. Okay?”

“Okay…okay.” He brings the engine to life with her usual energetic roar and we head back to the bunker.

——

I let Dean argue with the lights by himself. 

I helped him get the tree into the stand and get it standing up straight because if I was being forced to have a tree in the place, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be lopsided. I declined to help with the lights, though. Watching the little family at the hardware store had put a hole in my chest and it was aching. I couldn’t even really explain why, and that was frustrating Dean because he could tell I was upset over something, but I wasn’t telling him how to fix it, and that was going to inevitably lead to a fight if I didn’t just clear the room. So, I made an excuse about us not having had any lunch and went into the kitchen to warm up some soup for an early dinner.

I have no memories of family other than Dad and Dean, and they certainly don’t include anything like what I witnessed today. There may be something way back, buried under the weight of my life, hiding in the earliest part of my babyhood when Mom was still alive. But no person could remember that far back, and if Dean knew of anything, he never told me. Besides, none of them would be Christmas memories. I was born in May. Mom was killed in November. 

I stir the soup in the pan and try not to think about the young couple and their pretty little girl, or how happy they looked in the brusk afternoon air, all pink cheeked and smiling. I wonder if maybe that’s why I don’t get the Christmas thing. Three grown men hanging around at Christmas, giving each other gifts of favorite road food snacks and motor oil and maybe a pair of socks or a gently used shirt from the thrift store doesn’t make much of a celebration. Even less when there’s just Dean and me. And like I said before, it’s not like we can take the religious slant anymore.

I’m pouring the soup into bowls when Dean leans into the kitchen. 

“Hey, I got them up. You wanna come see?”

His voice is careful, soft, like he’s afraid I might bite him if he hits a wrong chord. I sigh, more at myself and my own stupid attitude than at him.

“Your soup’s ready.”

“Thanks.” He comes to the counter and retrieves a bowl. We stand there, bowls in hand, eating at the counter in silence. Bobby would be ashamed. He’d always tried to get us to sit down for at least one meal seeing as how we had so many on the move in the car.

“Please come look, Sammy.”

Dean’s voice is small, like I imagine it would have sounded years ago during a Christmas that he could remember having with just him and Dad and Mom. It pokes at that hole in my chest and makes it hurt worse, but I can’t blame that on him.

I nod slowly and follow him and his secret little smile into the den off the library where we decided to stand the tree up. It’s lit from top to bottom with probably twice the lights it needs or should have, and I say a small prayer of thanks for LED bulbs and their lack of heat. I gaze at it for a long moment and even I have to admit that he’s done a pretty good job and it really does look good.

“It’s real nice, Dean.”

“You think so?” His smile is hopeful.

I nod. “Yeah. I do.”

We stand there, finishing our soup and looking at the lights. I know there’s no actual warmth coming off the tree, but for just a second I think the room is a bit warmer than it was before. 

“You know,” Dean says, his voice all small again, “that little girl sure was pretty.”

“Hmm?” I take another bite of soup while his words register slowly through the golden glow coming from the tree. “What?”

“The one at the store.”

“Oh, yeah. She was sweet.” I rub an absent hand at my chest, feel Dean’s eyes on me.

“Sammy, did you ever think…?”

I wait for him to finish. He’s watching me expectantly, but I have no idea what he was going to say. “Think what?”

He looks at me for another full minute before he speaks, and I swear he can see that little hole in my chest. “Nothing, Sammy. It’s nothing.”

I let it go, almost afraid of what he might have said, and think about a bell-like little giggle and pigtails, and round, red cheeks smiling because she knows how much she’s loved.


	4. December 10

“Dean, your oatmeal is going to get cold if you—.”

My warning is interrupted by Dean’s mouth on mine as I turn to set his chocolate chip oatmeal on the table. I freeze so I don’t drop the bowl and let him finish kissing me thoroughly. He slips back an inch, grinning from ear to ear, and I can feel a silly, sloppy grin spreading over my own face.

“Morning, Sam.”

“Morning to you, too.”

——

I can hear Dean whistling down the east hall off the library, and I smile despite the dry, less than illuminating offerings of the Sanskrit text under my hands. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it, and it sounds like an off key rendition of some Guns ’n Roses song I can’t remember the name of.

I push back from the table and the text. I’ve been at this for hours and my stomach chooses that second to growl obnoxiously. I lean up and back, arms thrown over my head, to stretch out my cramped neck and back muscles.

And Dean’s lips are sliding over mine as he passes behind my chair and I can feel him smile, and he just keeps sliding and walks away, whistling as he goes.

I turn my head sharply to follow his fading footsteps and let out a low, ‘huh,’ mixed with sweet confusion and a low grade yearning. It’s not just my stomach that wants fed now.

——

Dean is crap at laundry. It’s not my favorite task either, but I’ve always made a deal with myself that I can sit down with any book of my choosing and read for as long as it takes the washer and dryer to finish. 

So, I’m sitting in the laundry with a copy of a paperback Charlie lent me on her last trip home called _The Fifth Elephant_ by some British guy named Terry Pratchett. Me, I tend toward Richard K. Morgan, but she made me promise to give it a try, so I am—and Dean is suddenly square between the pages of the book, head tilted at an impossible angle to get his mouth mashed against mine for the third random time today.

“What the—?”

He vanishes back out of the room with a Cheshire grin.

I stare after him, flabbergasted. 

Dean is anti-touchy-feely. Well, he says that anyway. If I can keep him from noticing long enough, he’ll be half curled into my lap while we read together in the library, or have his head pillowed on my shoulder while we watch a movie on my laptop in the den, and he’s the first to roll over into my side at night when we sleep. True, I inevitably wind up nestled into the curve of him before morning, but hey…life long habits die hard, and I spent a lot of years as the little spoon. What can I say?

So, all this random kissing is starting to set me on my guard. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it makes my wonder what my older brother has up his  sleeve.

——

I’ve got a bowl of popcorn in my hands on my way to the den to watch whatever Dean’s pulled up on the computer when he ambushes me from the shadows of the hallway and I nearly toss the whole thing in the air.

This kiss is a little less chaste, a little more mischievous, and quiet a bit more demanding; like he’s urging me to find the answer to why he’s been doing this all day, and this it going to be his final hint. 

When he finally pulls back, and after I chase his lips for half a heartbeat before coming back to my senses, he is grinning up at me, not exactly on tiptoe, but stretched full body against me from knee to chest.  I catch at his collar, not about to let him slip away for the fourth time today. I lift my eyebrow, the tilt to my chin asking all the questions for me. He rolls his eyes upward, and I follow his gaze to the ceiling where a small sprig of green rounded, petal-like leaves with pearl white berries is tacked mysteriously to the ceiling.

I lean back, frowning. “Dean, did you…?”

I set the popcorn on the end table, and lean into the library, looking up at the twelve foot ceilings above the the desk where he’d caught me this afternoon. Another sprig is hiding in the shadows of the crossbeams. I turn back to him.

“Every room of the bunker, I suppose?” I ask, amused. Hoping.

“Yup.”

“Bedroom?” I ask slyly.

“Come see,” he suggested with a half hooded smile.

——

Dean is curled into my side under the comforter that I’ve rucked up around us to keep the chill off our bare skin, dozing while I stare up at the waxy green leaves of the mistletoe he’s hung above our bed. I trace the curve of his ear absently with my fingers, and he sighs in his state of near sleep.

“So, exactly where all did you hang these things?” I ask. “And do I even want to know how you managed it?”

“No, you probably don’t,” he says, a little muffled against my chest. “And you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”

I chuckle gently. “The rule is a kiss every time we’re under it, right?”

“Yup.”

My grin broadens, and I shift an arm and knee, rolling him up and over on top of me with relative ease. He huffs a breath, pretending to be irritated.

“This should be a very interesting December, then,” I whisper against his mouth and proceed to thoroughly uphold the tradition.


	5. December 13

We’d  gone up to Iowa on Thursday for a salt and burn in some little farm community whose name didn’t rate making it to most maps. It was ultimately kind of a sad ordeal because the ghost we had to put down was a child, the daughter of the couple who lived on the farm, who had died when she was young, only six, and was terrorizing the new grandchildren when they came to visit. No deaths, luckily, but still sad.

I must have passed out somewhere just over the state line because it was nearly ten o’clock when Dean reached across the car to shake me awake.

“Hey, Sam…Sam. Wake up.”

I knuckle my eyes and blink a few times, trying to orient myself. Squinting out the window and not recognizing the surroundings as being anywhere near the bunker I look back over at him. “Where are we, Dean?”

“Look,” he says, voice wistful as he leans across me to peer out my window. 

I turn my head and follow his gaze to a house across the street. There are tiny white lights outlining it and a tree aglow in the darkened front room window. A nightlight shines out of one of the upstairs windows in a soft pink glow. The house itself looks vaguely familiar, and as I examine what landmarks I can make out in the dark, so does the rest of the block.

“Dean, is this…?”

“Yeah.” He just keeps looking out the window, eyes bright and big and round like I don’t think I’ve ever really seen them before. He suddenly looks really, really young. “I just…I don’t know. I kinda wanted to see the old place. See how it was faring. Looks good, doesn’t it?”

There’s a hitch in Dean’s voice that tugs at my heart and I casually put my hand to the back of his neck and squeeze gently until he turns his head to look at me. I swear I can see the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Yeah, looks…cozy. Must be a nice family living there.”

I really have no idea what the family is like. It’s possible that the same family we saved all those years ago, from what turned out to be a poltergeist and the ghost of our own mother, is still living there, but I kind of doubt it. An experience like that doesn’t just go away, and the lady was pretty freaked. I wouldn’t have blamed her for moving out of the state much less the house.

Dean’s got his elbows braced on the dash and the seat back and his head droops a little under my hand.

“Dean? You all right?” I ask softly, still rubbing with my fingers. I can feel tension building in the muscles under my hand.

He takes a deep breath that kind of hiccups through him and then looks up, avoiding my direct gaze, and nods with a somewhat watery smile. “‘Course. I’m good…”

I push my fingers further up his neck, scratching gently into his short hair. I think I know what really drew him here. “Dean, she’s long gone.”

His eyes flash over to meet mine, like he’s about to deny that he was thinking anything about mom, but then he shakes his head a little and sighs, bone deep and weary. “I know.”

I suppose I can’t really understand what Dean is feeling, much as I’d like to comfort him and say that I get it. I really don’t. My mother doesn’t exist in my memory except for photos with worn edges and tear stains, and there are only a couple in existence that have me in them as well. So, no, I really can’t understand how Dean feels looking at that house that used to be his—ours, I guess—all done up in Christmas lights with a wreath on the door and a glittering tree inside. From the look on his face, he’s remembering a holiday from years back when it was Dad who had put up those lights and the tree.

“You know, Sammy,” Dean says, leaning toward me a little and letting me work at the tension in his neck. “Dad used to take us—me and mom—out on Christmas Eve to see the lights. We’d walk up and down the blocks, and I would ride up high on his shoulders, and we’d look at all the lighted houses and the lawn ornaments and stuff. There was one house—.” He leans back suddenly and looks up and down the block and then puts the car into gear. “I wonder if he’s still here…”

“Who, Dean?”

“Old man Beck,” Dean says, letting the Impala idle herself down the block and around the corner as he leans to look out the windshield at the houses and their numbers. “He was a few years older than Dad. Had a hot daughter who used to babysit me.” He throws an eyebrow waggle my direction.

I snort. “What was she, like twelve, then?”

He shrugs. “But still hot. Anyway, Mr. Beck was into Christmas in a _big_ way and he had the brightest house in town. Not like ‘Griswold’ bright, but just really…awesome.” He turns another corner and then pulls the car over to the curb. “Well, what do you know…”

I lean over him this time and look out at a house that is radiating warm golden light from what must be thousands of lights trimming every edge and window. The trees in the yard are done in bright twinkling colors, and there are luminaries lining the drive and garlands strung along the eaves and icicle lights over the garage and lighted reindeer and a sleigh in the yard. 

Dean turns off the engine and gets out of the car. I follow and lean across the roof.

“Wow,” I say. The effect is very warming, a lot like the lights on our tree back at the bunker that I was so stubborn about putting up.

“He’s gotta be pushing eighty. I don’t know how he—.” Dean is cut off as the front door opens and a woman comes out, followed closely but two small children, a boy who looks about five and a girl maybe seven. The little boy looks up at her as if for permission and when she smiles he runs out into the yard and holds out his arms and turns in a circle. 

It’s only then I realize, it’s started to snow.

“Dean,” I say softly. “We should probably go. It looks a little weird just standing here staring.”

Dean doesn’t look at me. He’s watching the little boy who is trying to catch the still small but fast growing snowflakes in the cup of his hands.

“Relax, Sam. People expect a little staring when they light up their houses like this,” he says, leaning back against the car and shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. “People used to come from the neighboring towns to see this place. There was a lot more then. Moving decorations and lights set to music…”

The woman has been joined now by a man and an old woman who is bundling a shawl around her thin shoulders as she stands in the doorway and watches the little boy dive around the yard. The girl is a little more reserved and just hangs over the porch railing looking upward at the falling snow.

Snowflakes are starting to gather in Dean’s hair and on the shoulders of his jacket. I’m about to suggest that we get back in the car when the old woman looks over at us. She just looks for a second, lifts her hand in a tentative wave which Dean returns, then she frowns a little before tugging at the younger woman’s sleeve.

“Ok, Dean, time to go. You’re starting to cause a scene,” I say, knowing that he still looks pretty rough from our night of grave digging and ten hours in the car.

The younger woman looks over, squints a little and then her face breaks out in a grin. She comes off the porch, slowly at first and then with a surer stride and stops at the end of the driveway, staring at Dean.

“Dean Winchester?”

Dean starts a little against the side of the car but straightens up. “Maggie?”

“Yes! Oh my, God! I don’t believe it’s you!” She comes across the street and stands a foot or so in front of Dean. Her husband has taken an interest and is meandering down the driveway, casual but cautious, and the little boy has stopped his darting around. 

“I thought my mom was seeing things,” Maggie says, face still all alight, “but sure enough…here you stand!”

Dean ducks his head a little and I can imagine the sheepish little smile on his lips as he says, “Yeah, but how did you know it was me?”

Maggie grins. “The way you were standing, I think. You’d always stand that way when you were little, too. Very definitive, even when you were three.” She laughs and it’s a very pretty sound, but then her face goes soft and a little serious. “I always wondered what happened to you after the fire.”

“Maggie? Everything all right, sweetheart?” the man calls from the end of the drive. His gaze is flicking between Dean and me. I give him a nod and what I hope is an earnest smile. 

Maggie turns. “Yes! Mike, this is Dean Winchester, and…?”

“Sam,” Dean supplies, looking over his shoulder at me.

“That’s right…Sam.” I wave to both of them as she says my name. “Sam Winchester. I used to babysit Dean when he and his family lived over on the other block, Mike.” She looks across at me. “I don’t think I ever got to babysit for you, though, Sam.”

“Not that I recall,” I joke lightly, and she smiles back.

“How have you boys been?”

Dean nods a little and shrugs. “Good. Fine. How ‘bout you? Still in the old place, huh?”

“Yeah, Mom needed help after Dad died and Mike had hit a rough patch what with the economy and all a few years back, so we decided to move home. But everything’s good now, isn’t it, honey?”

Mike had come to put a gently possessive arm around Maggie’s shoulders, and she snuggled into his side in answer to all the silent questions his body was asking her about these two mysterious men oggling his home. She patted his chest. 

“That’s great,” Dean says, backing up a step and leaning into the side of the car again to ease the man’s mind. “We were just, uh, passing through and I remembered how your old man used to do up the house every year, and I wanted Sammy to see.”

Maggie turns to look back at all the lights. “Yeah, he did it right up until the year he died. Mike took over after that. Kind of a town tradition, you know? We don’t go quite as all out as he did, but we try to make it look nice.”

Dean ducks his head again, and I’m not sure now if he would be smiling or warding off tears if I could see his face. “It’s still nice, Maggie. Real nice.”

She turns back to him, her face gone soft again, and I can see the maternal twitch of muscles across her shoulders and arms like she wants to reach out and comfort the little boy who’s grown up to be such a mysteriously sad man, and I know that it’s tears Dean is fighting with that duck of his head.

“Dean, we should…probably go?” I interrupt gently. He turns to me and swipes a hand across his eyes. 

“Yeah, Sam. Yeah.” He touches Maggie’s shoulder gently. “It was real nice seeing you, Maggie. We’ve had a pretty long day on the road, so Sam’s probably right. We should get going.”

Maggie nods. “It was good to see you too, Dean. You boys take care of yourselves.”

“We will. Say ‘hi’ to your mom for me. She made the best snicker doodles around!”

Maggie grins over her shoulder as Mike leads her back across the street. “I will!”

We stand and watch while Maggie and Mike corral their little boy and head back inside as the snowflakes start to fall in earnest, big and fluffy and featherlight where they land on the spiky tips of Dean’s hair.

Dean slides back into the driver’s seat, and I stay to watch as they go inside and close the front door. 

That hole in my chest that opened up a few days ago feels a little bigger as I see their shadows passing in front of the window, laughing and hugging. The old woman, though, tugs aside the curtain and looks out, directly me, and I have the feeling from the tender sadness around her eyes that she knows Dean and I are not going back home to a place full of light and life like this one.

I lift my hand in farewell and she gives a nod and lets the curtain fall back into place.

 

Dean went quite a bit out of our way to go see the old house and we have to backtrack almost three hours. It’s after one in the morning when we finally pull the Impala into her snug spot in the bunker’s garage. We grab our gear from the trunk and head inside. I go straight for the shower, not wanting to go to bed with fifteen hours of road grime on me, and Dean takes our equipment bag, presumably to the armory to wipe everything down and stow it. 

Once I’ve had a good soak and scrubbed the grit and grave dust out of my hair, I go out into the bedroom to find that Dean isn’t there waiting his turn in the shower. So, I wander to the armory, but he isn’t there either. Late night snack, maybe? Not in the kitchen.

I finally end in the den where I find him sitting on the edge of the couch staring at the tree. He’s turned on the lights and is just sitting there, elbows on splayed knees, and it takes me getting a view from the right angle to see the reflection of tear tracks on his cheek.

“Dean?”

He doesn’t look at me. “Sorry, ‘bout that, Sam.”

“About what?” I sit down carefully beside him, mimicking his posture, but looking at him instead of the tree.

He shrugs a little. “The house. I know you were tired, and I don’t know what I was really thinking driving all that way. I didn’t expect to find…I mean, I knew there wasn’t going to be any…” I put an arm around his shoulders as his head drops down and his hands come up. “God, Sammy, I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

“Don’t be sorry.” I rub a hand over his hair. “I just don’t remember things the same way you do. I don’t remember _her_.”

“I know, Sam. I know, and I’m sorry that I keep pushing and pushing. I shouldn’t.”

“It’s okay.”

We sit in silence for a while, Dean staring at the tree, me rubbing at his shoulders in small, slow circles.

“It was good to see Maggie,” he says eventually. I make a sound of agreeable acknowledgement in my throat. “She looked really happy.” I nod. “I guess that’s what it’s all about, huh, Sam? When it comes right down to it. You strip everything else away, and it’s really all about being together as a family, and we…haven’t got that.”

“What?” My hand stops between his shoulder blades. “Dean. You always said… _we_ were a family. The only family we had…”

Dean turns then, hearing the catch in my voice. “Sammy, no. No, no. That’s not what I meant.” He takes my hands in his and holds them hard, rubbing at my knuckles with his thumbs. “God, no. We _are_ a family, Sam. You and me. You are the most important part of my life, and I love you. I do. So much. I only meant…” 

He struggles for a minute, trying to find words to vocalize what’s sitting there just outside his articulated reach.  “I don’t know what I meant,” he finally says, defeated.

I squeeze his hands a little and say quietly, “You meant it’s about hope and the future, what comes after…and there isn’t much ‘after’ for us, Dean. We’re it. The end of the line It’s just us, and we’re not big on hope. Because of all the things we’ve seen? It’s a little hard to find hope in all that fucked up mess.

“People hope because they believe the future will be brighter because there has to be someone, something, some purpose out there that’s making all this chaos worth while. But the thing is…” I shudder once under the wave of memory and knowledge collected over all the years we’ve hunted and fought and died, in the name of…what? “The thing is, is that there isn’t. And we know that. We’ve seen it.”

“Oh, Sammy…” Dean pulls me forward into his arms, and it isn’t until I have my face tucked into his neck and feel the wetness between my skin and his that I realize somewhere in there I started to cry.


	6. December 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this one got a little away from me, but I really liked where it was going so I just let it run...

The only thing I hate worse than Christmas is being sick.

Especially after the trials. I had my fill of being nauseous, weak, feverish, and feeling generally all around crappy during that year we were convinced we could close the gates of Hell even if it meant me forfeiting what life I had left. 

So, when the chills set in around five in the morning, all I can do is groan into my pillow in apprehension of what’s coming.

“Sam?”

Dean’s voice is soft, low, just in case I’m still asleep and he’s only dreamed my muffled groan. He use to be a heavy sleeper. Nothing could wake him, probably not even the apocalypse, had he tried to actually sleep through it, but ever since I got so sick during the trials, he somehow tapped back into whatever instinct he had used when we were young and he would wake at my very first fussing in the middle of the night and come get me from my crib so Dad wouldn’t wake up.

“‘M fine. Go back to sleep, Dean,” I mumble into my pillow, biting into it to keep my teeth from chattering.

His hand comes up to rest between my shoulder blades, and I try really hard to lock down the full body shiver that rips through me, but my tense muscles are just as much of a give away to him, and he’s immediately stretched out along my back, pulling me close and rubbing his hand up and down my arm to warm me. He presses his cheek to the side of my face, and I know he can feel the heat from the fever that’s building behind my eyes. 

“Damn it.” He curses softly and rolls out of bed. I hear him shuffling around the room, grabbing an extra blanket, going into the bathroom and terrorizing the medicine cabinet for a thermometer, the one he got just because my brain had tried to boil itself during those damn trials.

“Dean, come back to bed.” My throat feels scratchy as I raise my voice loud enough to be heard. Damn it. “I’m fine. It’s just a cold…or something.”

“It’s the ‘or something’ that worries me, Sammy,” he answers, and I hear the snap-pop of a medicine bottle being opened and the rustle of a bag of throat lozenges from the bathroom. “Never should have had you out in that snow digging’ up that damn grave the other night.”

I roll over, tugging the blankets up to my chin, and feel the all over ache in my joints like someone’s sucked out my cartilage and left them all bone grinding on bone. Fuck, I hate being sick.

Dean hates it, too. He’s a panicky mess now every time I so much as sneeze.

“Here, put this under your tongue.” Dean produces the thermometer and I open my mouth obediently. He stands over me dosing out something sickly sweet smelling and so green it looks radioactive. I wrinkle my nose at it when Dean takes the thermometer and offers me the offending cup. 

“Deeean…” I whine, but he presses the cup forward and I open my mouth so he can tip it down. His brow pulls down as he squints at the thermometer. 

“Hundred and one, Sammy.”

I groan and roll into the pillow. “No wonder I feel like shit.”

Dean spreads the extra blanket over me. “I’m going to go get you some juice. You need to stay hydrated.”

And there it is, that sharp edge of fear in his voice. I reach out from under the blankets and grab his hand before he can get out the door. “Dean, it’s just a cold. I’ll be fine. Okay?”

“I know,” he says without meeting my eyes. “I know. I just…”

“You’re worried.”

Dean sighs heavily. “Yeah, I…. It’s just that you never really bounced back after all that trials shit, you know? Not all the way back.”

It’s my turn to sigh. “Cas did the best he could. I’m here. I’m alive. If maybe I don’t get my full measure, that’s okay, isn’t it? After everything?”

Dean drops down on the side of the bed. “No. No, it’s not okay, Sammy; and quit talkin’ like that. You’re delirious.” He presses the back of his hand against the side of my face. “Maybe your fever’s higher than I thought.”

He shakes the thermometer down and slides it back between my now passive lips.

“I’m going to go get you some juice and some water. You’re going to drink every drop, and then you’re going back to sleep.”

“Yes, Dean,” I mumble around the thermometer. 

Dean hates it when I get philosophical on him. He really hates it when I’m sick, running a fever, and _then_ get philosophical. 

I shove at the blankets. Suddenly I’m too hot. My insides feel like they’re smoldering, but the air in the room is icy on my hot skin. I shiver and feel like my bones are going to shatter with the force. The thermometer rattles between my teeth. The ache in my joints has quadrupled just in the last few minutes and I can’t move without groaning at the unfair misery of it all. 

“Dean…” I moan pitifully. My own voice sounds like its coming up from a well in my ears, and my throat is thick and scratchy and feels likes it’s closing up. My eyes are so dry and hot that my eyelids scrape on them when I blink. I squinch them shut tight and whimper..

“Dean…”

“Sam, I got you white grape, orange, and what I think is…uh, tangerine? And I want you to drink—shit, Sammy.”

I’ve kicked all the covers off. I’m nearly convulsing with the violent shivers racking me, and I feel like I’m going to start bleeding from my pores any second. My skin is too hot and tight.

“Sammy?” Dean is by me. His hands are chilly on my face as he smooths back my hair and takes the thermometer. “Christ…Sammy, your fever’s climbing like…”

Like the trials, I think he’s thinking, but it wasn’t like this even during the trials. That was a gradual decline that culminated in me passed out on the motel floor with my brain on fire and Dean shoving me into a tub of ice. But that fever had built over weeks; this…this is like being hit by a bullet train.

He’s squinting at the thermometer again. “Too high, Sam. Way too high. Haven’t seen anything like this. Not since that winter when—.”

He cuts himself off. My brain is feeling muzzy and his words are rattling like dice in my my head, landing wrong side up and not adding together to equal anything that makes sense to me, but a stray memory sparks, and I remember for a second what winter he’s talking about and why he stopped.

It was the winter I almost died.

“Sammy, I gotta get you cooled down,” Dean is saying. “Come on. Into the tub with you.”

“No…no…” I whine again, higher pitched, trying ineffectually to push away his hands. 

“I know, baby boy. I know. But it’s the only way, okay? Come on,” he coaxes gently, but all I can do now is cling and cry into his neck. My body hurts so I can hardly stand my own skin. I remember the baths. I know how Dean is going to try and cool me down, and while I know he has to do it, I’m afraid of it, and I know how much it’s going to hurt, and I don’t want to do it.

“Please, Dean…no…” I whimper at him, tears like acid etching down my cheeks. It hurts even to cry now.

“Jesus, Sammy…”

Dean’s got me in his arms like I’m five again, and he’s lifting me, carrying me into the bathroom. A few of my brain cells stop to marvel at how he’s managing it. I may be lanky and still underweight and lacking a lot of the muscle tone I had a few years ago, but I still have nearly four inches on him. His voice is tripping over the edge into panic and he sounds young, very young and afraid, like he did during that winter.

We never really did figure out what was wrong with me. It was the winter after I turned fourteen. I’d been pretty sick since late September, catching crap and never really getting all the way over it. I was useless on hunts, even to do research, and missing a lot of school. Dad finally decided to just take me to Bobby’s to stay and see if I could get better there. He made Dean stay with me even though Dean was eighteen and raring to be on the hunt right beside Dad. Bobby took one look at me when we got there and figured I’d been hexed or cursed, but we managed to rule that one out in a few days even while I continued to go downhill. 

Then about a week after Dad dropped us off, Dean woke up in the middle of the night to me being nearly catatonic in the bed beside him with a fever so high it almost went off the thermometer scale. I don’t remember much of it except what he told me afterward, how he yelled for Bobby and together they got me into a cool bath, but my temperature wouldn’t come down and they finally started to add cold water and ice and Dean was so panicked that he crawled right into the bath with me.

I do remember that a little. While I lay there in the freezing water feeling like I’d been flayed and then had my raw skin salted, I remember the sound of his voice in my ear telling me that if I died tonight he was going to kill me. I remember the rumble of his chest pressed against my back and his arms holding me tight and keeping my head above the water. I remember his sobs and begging me to hang on because what would he do without his pain in the ass little brother to pester the shit out of him all the time. 

“Sammy? Sammy, you with me?”

I roll my head against his shoulder. It’s suppose to be a nod, and I hope he understands. I can hear the tap running and feel him pulling at my t-shirt and sleep pants, and my insides start to tremble with more than just fever chills. 

“Dean, please…I don’t wanna get in the water…please?”

Dean’s hands are on my face again and I settle into them, letting him take the weight of my too hot and heavy head. “I know you don’t, baby boy, but we have to get this fever down.”

He lifts me up in his arms and is trying to get me to step into the water. “No, Dean! Please!”  

I cling to his shoulders, nearly sobbing now. His weight shifts against me, and I hear him take a sharp, hissing breath and there’s the swish of water against the side of the tub.

“Come on, baby boy. I got you,” he says again, and this time he’s pulling me into the tub after him and I realize that he’s getting in the water with me, just like he did then.

“Dean… you’ll freeze,” I complain.

“I’ll survive. Now, up you go. Come on.” He lifts behind my knees and gets my feet over the edge and into the water, and it’s just as awful and cutting and painful as I remember from before, but he holds me tight as he lowers me so slow and gentle into the water and ends with me pressed up against his chest and his arms wrapped around me from behind. 

“Just like that winter,” I mumble through chattering teeth after we’ve sat in the water for a few minutes.

“Yeah,” he agrees. He’s got his jaw clenched to keep his own teeth from chattering. I can tell. “One more reason for you to hate Christmas, I suppose.”

“Hmmm…?” I’m drifting off now, riding up above all the pain in my body. The only thing I can feel with any certainty is Dean’s arms around me.

“Yeah, don’t you remember? It was Christmas Eve the night we spent together in that last cold bath,” he says. He presses a kiss to the side of my head. “But that was probably the best Christmas I ever had.”

I make a sound of offended disbelief in my throat, and he presses his nose and mouth deeper into my hair and takes a shuddering breath. “I got you back, Sammy. I really truly thought I was going to lose you that night, and I promised— _whoever_ —was listening that if they just gave you back to me for Christmas, I’d never ask for another present again.”

My chest constricts at his soft confession and it has nothing to do with the sickness burning through me. I roll my head, turning my face into the curve of his neck. “’Member how scared you were…”

“Scared. Hell, I was terrified, Sam. You were delirious and crying and begging not to go—somewhere. You had Bobby so scared he was drawing devil’s traps and wardings all over the bathroom walls and had salt all around the tub and a double line at the door.”

“Never told me that…” 

Dean readjusts his arm around me and pushes my damp hair away from my face. “No. You didn’t seem to remember hardly anything afterward, and I didn’t figure there was any sense in scaring you. I don’t know what you saw, but it couldn’t have been good.”

I sigh and shiver a little. Dean holds me tighter. “Someone in the room with us…wanted to take me away…take me from you…”

Dean stills in sifting through my hair. “You remember now?”

“Not really…just remember…didn’t want to leave you.”

Darkness is creeping in on me. My skin doesn’t feel quite as tight, like I’m going to burst at the seams, anymore. The water isn’t cutting against my skin either, it almost feels relaxing just laying here cradled back against Dean’s chest. 

“Feel better?” he asks.

“Mmmmm.”

He presses a hand to my cheek and my forehead, then I feel the thermometer at my lips. A minute later he checks it and makes a satisfied grunting noise. I feel him shift behind me and lift me forward. “Time to get you dried off and get you back to bed. Can you sit for just a second?” 

I nod lazily and feel him stand up, climb out of the tub, water cascading into the floor from his sodden pants and t-shirt. There’s the wet flop of soaked fabric hitting the tile and then he’s lifting me up, wrapping a towel around me, and rubbing me dry. My teeth start to chatter and my skin goose-pimples. 

“Hang on, Sammy,” Dean croons. “Let me get you all dry and then you can crawl back in bed and get warm.”

“You, too,” I say, letting my forehead rest on his shoulder while he dries my back and shoulders, and squeezes water out of my dripping hair.

“Yeah, me, too. I promise.”

I think I actually doze off somewhere in there, because Dean has me dressed and is tucking me back in bed before I remember even leaving the bathroom. A glass gets pressed to my lips and I swallow dutifully until it’s all gone. Dean secures the blankets under my chin and presses a kiss to my still warm forehead, then I can hear him moving around the room, cleaning up the wet towels and clothes, getting back into clothes himself, gathering up medicine and anything else he thinks he might need on hand in the next few hours. 

“Dean…”

“I’m comin’, baby boy. I’m comin’,” Dean assures me quietly. A minute later I feel the mattress dip beside me, and he slides under the covers and nestles up to my side. One arm goes over my chest to tug me close and his knee comes up and over my hips, foot slotting between my legs. He kisses my temple. “Sleep, Sam. You’ll be all better when you wake up.”

 

I sleep, and I dream.

 

_“Sammy…?” Dean’s voice is so soft, so small. I’ve never heard him sound quite like this before. I work my mouth to try and make a sound, words, but my tongue feels thick and clogs up my throat. I cough. A glass is pressed against my lips, and I swallow automatically. “Better?”_

_I nod. “Dean, what happened?”_

_“Got a fever, kiddo. Real bad one. Remember anything?”_

_“Naw…not really.” I let out an involuntary moan. “Hurts, Dean.”_

_“Yeah, I expect so. You were thrashing pretty hard in the tub last night, and you’re still running a fever, but it’s breaking.” He presses a hand against my damp forehead, a sure sign that he’s right. “Feel like gettin’ up for a minute? I need to change the sheets. You’ve soaked through them.”_

_I nod a little and try to sit up._

_“Whoa, take it slow, baby brother. I got you.” Dean eases me up and helps me out of the bed and to a chair, tucking a blanket close around me. He strips the bed and gets it remade inside of three minutes. He’s pretty efficient when he wants to be. “Want a shower?”_

_I shake my head quickly, memories of last night’s awful bath still hanging on._

_“Okay, let me get a washcloth and we’ll just sponge you down.”_

_Dean does exactly that, coming back with a bowl of water, a washcloth and a towel. He works me over one small part at a time, conscientious of keeping as much of me warm and covered as possible while he washes me down and gets me into fresh sweats and a t-shirt. When he’s done, he puts me back to bed with orders to sleep. I obey without so much as a whisper._

_When I wake again, it’s evening outside. I can see the dark cobalt of the sky outside our second story bedroom window at Bobby’s. I feel much more coherent. I’m still a little sweaty, but I feel a lot cooler, and my brain doesn’t feel like it’s trying to push its way out my nose and ears. Dean is sitting in the chair by the window, slumped a little. I wonder why he hasn’t just come to bed and laid down with me, although I’m probably not the nicest smelling bed partner by now. I roll to my side, take a sip of water from the glass by the bed and then just watch him while he sleeps._

_He’s really come into his own in the last six months or so. He was always beautiful to me, in a way that no other man or woman ever has been, but he’s really filled out this last year and put on another inch or two. He looks more like the pictures I’ve seen of Mom everyday, especially his eyes, but his mannerisms are all Dad. Like now. He’s slumped in the chair, one booted foot extended, knees splayed, head propped up on his fist. I wish some artist would come and carve him in marble just like that. Except he would never look right, not unless they could get his eyes…_

_Moss green flickers open to meet my own dark gaze, and Dean smiles, slow and soft and tender._

_I love that smile._

_“Hey.”_

_“Hey, to you, too,” he says, stretching his neck and back, muscles rippling under the fabric of a t-shirt that’s just on this side of too snug. “How ya feelin’, Sammy?”_

_“Pretty good, I think. Better anyway.”_

_“Good. Feel like some juice or something?”_

_“Yeah. That’d be good.” I wince at stiff muscles as I ease myself up into a sitting position. Dean is at my side instantly._

_“Take it slow, Sam.”_

_“I’m good. Just stiff.” I roll my neck a little. “Can I go downstairs?”_

_“Sure, if you feel up to it.”_

_Dean helps me stand, tugs a hoody over my head and gets socks on my feet, then puts his arm around my shoulders and holds my weight against his side. We make our way down the stairs slowly, and he settles me on the couch with an afghan._

_“Want some of the herbal tea you like so much?”_

_“Please?” I nod with my best puppy dog eyes. Dean laughs and rolls his eyes and goes into the kitchen._

_I snuggle down under the afghan and look out the window. It snowed sometime during the night and all the ground outside is covered in a fresh thick blanket. It’s even hard to see all the junker cars in the yard. Everything looks very peaceful._

_I hear stomping on the front porch and then the front door opens and Bobby comes in covered in a dusting of flakes._

_“Still snowin’ out there,” he says to whoever’s listening. “‘Nother inch’er two by morning, I expect. Dean, you in the kitchen?”_

_“Yeah,” I hear him call._

_“Got what you asked for—oh.” Bobby’s eyes light on me huddled in the corner of the couch. “Hey, Sam. How ya feelin’, son?”_

_“Better,” I say._

_“Good. Good.” He nods, pushing back his ball cap in his habitual manner. “Gave us a run for our money last night, boy. Wasn’t too sure what shape you’d be in today.”_

_“But he’s doing just fine now,” Dean said, coming up behind Bobby with two steaming mugs. He slices Bobby a look and I wonder what it’s for. “Fresh coffee in the pot if you want.”_

_Bobby nods and turns toward the kitchen. “Oh, here. Got what you asked for. Hope it’s what you had in mind. Called in a favor from Benson in town.”_

_Bobby puts a small package wrapped in brown paper on the bookshelf and goes to get himself a mug of coffee. Dean hands me a mug and I can smell honey and lemon wafting up with the steam._

_“Thanks.”_

_He nods, wanders over to the package, picks it up and then comes to sit down beside me. He sets it on my knees. “Here. Merry Christmas, Sammy.”_

_I stare at him blankly. “It’s Christmas?”_

_“Yup.” He sips at his mug. Coffee. He was never one for tea. Too girly. “Look, I know you’re not big on it, but I just…I wanted you to have something special. After last night, I…”_

_He doesn’t finish, just looks at me with eyes that are still shadowed by some deep terror, and my stomach clenches a little. Dean’s never scared. At least he never lets anyone see if he is, not even me anymore. I wonder exactly what happened last night._

_“Open it.” He pushes the package a little closer._

_“I didn’t get you anything,” I counter._

_“Don’t have to, Sammy. Not ever.” He cups my cheek for just a second. “Got everything I want right here.”_

_I feel myself blushing a little and duck into my cup to take another swallow of tea, then I set the mug aside and pick up the package. It’s weighty for its size. I pick the tape off the edges of the paper, feeling Dean’s eyes on me the whole time, and carefully peel back the paper and smooth it down._

_Inside are five silver throwing knives rolled up in velvet and tied with a leather cord. I pull one free and examine it carefully, jaw loose in awe. There’s a small ‘SW’ engraved at the base of the blade._

_“Dean, you shouldn’t have…”_

_“Like them?” Dean is all grins now._

_“Yeah. I love them! Wow. But, Dean, they must have cost you a fortune.” I pull a face._

_He shrugs. “Bobby got them for me from a guy he knows. Gave him a good deal. Besides, you’re worth it, kiddo.” He ruffles my hair. “You and knives are like hand and glove. Figured it was time you had your own set as good as you’ve gotten with them.”_

_I slip the knife back into its velvet sheath and carefully roll them back up, then throw myself into Dean’s arms. “Thank you, Dean. You’re the best.”_

_He wraps me up and noses his way deep into my flyaway hair, and I feel his warm breath on my scalp. “Love you, baby brother.”_

_“Love you, too, Dean.”_

 

I wake groggy but feeling a lot closer to human than when I fell asleep. Dean is still beside me, snoring lightly, arm and leg still slung across me. I’m soaked to the bone, and I feel drained, loose and raggedy. My fever has broken. 

I turn my head into Dean’s hair and nose him gently. “Hey.”

I feel him come awake against me in increments. His muscles ripple and stretch and his ribs expand in that first deep breath after waking. He burrows a little into my side before he tilts his head up and his green eyes blink awake gazing at me.

“Hey, yourself. How ya feel?”

I tentatively take stock. “Pretty good, considering.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He rolls off of me. I’ve soaked through his sweats and t-shirt, too. He pulls the damp fabric off his chest. “Well, fever’s breaking it looks like.”

“Yup.” I roll to my side, reveling in the fact that it doesn’t hurt to do it. “Sorry.”

“Hey, I’ll get you back,” he says, smiling and ruffling my hair gently. “Sweat all over me…just wait ‘till I have my next mean hangover.”

I make a face, but I know he’s teasing. Dean doesn’t really drink that much anymore.

“Feel like getting cleaned up?”

I push up slowly on an elbow. I feel a little lightheaded, but the room generally stays put. “I think so. Might need some help, though.”

“Figured.”

Dean helps me through the shower, gets us both changed into fresh clothes, and then situates me in the den with a couple of books, a quilt, and a promise of hot tea.

“Dean?”

He turns at the door. “Yeah, Sam?”

I chew on the side of my thumb hesitantly. “In my room. Could you get me something?”

“Sure. What?”

“In the dresser, bottom drawer, there’s a leather pouch. Bring it in?”

He gives me an odd look. “Okay.”

I stare after him for a minute, then turn my gaze to the tree. He’s turned on the lights. They twinkle warmly through the branches, and there’s the whiff of fresh evergreen in the air. He hasn’t decorated it yet. I don’t know if that’s because he’s afraid it might be pushing things a little with me or just because he hasn’t found any decorations.

He comes back a few minutes later, proffering the leather bag. “This the one?”

“Yeah.” He turns away, but I grab his hand. “Sit. Please?”

“Sure, Sam.” He looks me up and down, gazes at the bag in my hands, sees them tremble just a little. “Everything all right, Sammy?”

“Mmm-hmmm.” I unzip the bag and very carefully pull out a velvet roll. I hear Dean’s breath hitch just a little. I untie the leather cord that’s become dry over the years with disuse, and unfurl the soft fabric. Five silver blades glint in the light from the tree.

“Didn’t know you still had those,” Dean says softly. “After you left…”

I stare at the blades. They’ve never been used. I never wanted their edges dulled throwing them at wooden targets, and I couldn’t bear to think of them covered in some monster’s blood. Dean had given them to me as one of the first and last real Christmas gifts I could recall. I didn’t want anything to happen to them.

“Took them with me. Always had them with me.”

He nods. “Thought maybe you hocked them or something. You know, when you needed book money or something at college.”

I shake my head adamantly. “No. Never. They were..special. You gave them to me.” I keep my gaze on the knives laid out across my knees, finger the handles carefully before a I stammer out, “Th-thank you…for staying. I know you wanted to be out with Dad hunting, but…I don’t know if I would have…if you hadn’t been there.”

“Sam.” Dean’s voice is low and serious. “I made Dad leave me behind with you.”

“You did?” I dare to look up and find that he’s smiling a little. I smile back. He reaches over and curls a hand around the back of my neck. 

“You’re the best, Sam. You know that, right? Couldn’t live without you.”

I feel the heat of a blush on my cheeks. “You either, Dean.”

He leans in and kissed the top of my head, gives my neck a little squeeze. “Still want that tea?”

“Yes, please.”

“Comin’ right up.”

He goes off to the kitchen, and I sit in the glow from the tree, stroking the velvet roll in my lap and thinking of Christmas’ past and green eyes shining.


	7. December 18

The fever really takes it out of me and it’s about three days before I’m feeling up to doing much besides laying around on the couch and shuffling back and forth between the kitchen, but Dean has  relaxed considerably and when he had to resort to mixing dry milk for my oatmeal this morning, he decided it was time to venture out for supplies. 

I’m still a little low on the energy scale, so I’m tucked in under an afghan on the couch in the den with the tree lights, which are definitely growing on me, glowing softly and a grimoire spread on my knees that I’m researching for a spell to counteract a paralysis hex that’s affected one of our hunter community. Its affects only happen when the hunter hears a particular word or phrase, so it works a lot like hypnosis except that we haven’t found a way to reverse it, nor do we know the particular word or phrase that’s causing it. 

I’ve been working for almost two hours when I hear the front door open and not just Dean’s voice filters down the stairs but also another much higher, smaller one.

“Dean?” I call.

“Yeah, Sam. I’m home. Got you that caramel tea you wanted.”

“Oh, good. Thanks. Did you get the creamer?” I’ve taken a very grudging but obsessive liking to that peppermint creamer Dean got a couple weeks ago. 

“Yes, Sam, I got the creamer, too.”

I can hear him snicker and respond by sticking my tongue out even though he’s not here to see.

“Dean, I think I might need to do some more digging,” I say, hearing him moving my direction. “This grimoire doesn’t seem to have anything very—.”

I stop when a small blond head leans around the doorway. 

“Hello?” I say slowly.

Dean comes up and gently urges the little girl forward. She can’t be more than five if that. She’s tiny, even for her age, and has a head full of cornsilk blond hair that wisps around her little heart shaped face. Her eyes are large and round in her face, bright green that’s a shade more vibrant than Dean’s. I raise an eyebrow at him.

“This is Sam, Elly,” Dean says, his hand gently cupping the back of her little head. “I know he looks a little big and scary, but I promise he’s a real teddy bear.”

I smile at Elly, hoping it’s friendly and open even though I can feel a case of nerves twitching at its edges. I’m not very good with kids. That’s more Dean’s department, though I suppose after having nearly raised me, it would be. It’s not that I don’t like them. They’re just usually put off by my height, and I’m always afraid I’m going to break them. 

“Hey, Elly, it’s nice to meet you,” I say in my softest voice. 

She’s hesitant at first, leaning into Dean’s leg with a couple of fingers trying to inch their way past her lips like she wants to suck them in her nervousness but knows she’s not supposed to. 

“Elly is Mindy’s niece,” Dean explains. “Her sitter came down with something nasty last night, and she was at the shop when I stopped to pick up a couple of things. She looked awfully bored stuck in the corner by herself, so I offered to watch her for the afternoon.”

I know I’m staring, but I can’t help it. Dean likes kids—okay, fine—but I’ve never known him to so gregariously offer to babysit one he barely knows and on a whim to beat.

“That was…nice of you, Dean,” I say, still a little bewildered. He passes me a ‘look’ over her head, and I know there must be more to this that he doesn’t want to say in front of her. Elly reaches up and tugs at Dean’s jean’s pocket.

“Can I have a drink, please?” she asks in little more than a whisper.

“Absolutely, Peanut.” Dean smiles down at her. “And I think some lunch is probably in order, huh?” She nods a little. “Okay. Sam? Front and center on the griddle,” Dean says and then looks down at Elly with a wink and conspiratorial grin. “Nobody does grilled cheese like Sammy.”

I roll my eyes, but smile indulgently and push off the afghan. “Grilled cheese it is.”

We go into the kitchen and Dean lifts Elly to sit up on the counter beside him while she sips at a glass of milk and he puts away groceries. I warm up the griddle and lean against the fridge while Dean stocks the fresh veggies he bought—all on my account, of course. In a low voice I ask,

“So?”

Dean doesn’t look up, but I can see the tug of a frown at the corner of his mouth. “Mindy said her sister dropped her off a couple of weeks ago,  promised to come back in couple of days, and she hasn’t heard from her since.”

I scowl, cast a glance at Elly and lean in. “Anything we need to check out?”

Dean shakes his head a bit. “Don’t think so. Sounds like the sister is a bit flighty anyway. Mindy didn’t sound too worried. More annoyed. Don’t think this is the first time.”

He shrugs. I wait. “And?”

“What?”

“So, you just bring her home with you?”

Dean casts me an innocent look, then glances past me for a second, and I catch a spark of tenderness that flickers through his eyes. “I felt sorry for her. Shoot me.”

“Push over.” I shake my head and turn to Elly. “So, Elly…cheesy or extra cheesy?”

She stares at me with wide eyes for a long second then says into her cup, “Extra?”

I grin. “Extra it is.”

We sit down ten minutes later to a lunch of extra cheesy grilled cheese sandwiches, instant chocolate pudding that Dean whipped up, and tall glasses of milk. I watch Elly eat in small, polite bites. She keeps her eyes on her plate, sliding looks at me every minute or two. I smile at her, but it makes her gaze skitter away. The rest of the time I spend watching Dean watching Elly. He’s smiling without knowing it, and his eyes are bright when he asks her what’s on her Christmas list this year. 

“I’d like a kitty,” she says immediately. “But mommy won’t let me have one.”

“Mmmm. I’m a dog man myself,” Dean says with a smile. “But I’ll bet you’d like a…white one. Long soft fur and pretty blue eyes?”

Elly gives a shy smile around her bite of grilled cheese. Dean winks back.

We finish eating and Dean cleans up, insisting that I stay at the table and rest even though I’m really feeling fine, revived actually. Almost reenergized. Elly is circling her bowl of chocolate pudding, getting the last out of the bottom with her spoon and licking it clean when she looks up and asks,

“Why don’t you have any decorations on your Christmas tree?”

Dean’s hands go still in the dishwater for a moment. I take a deep breath and then smile at Elly. 

“You know, you’re right, Elly. I, uh, got sick a few days ago…before we got a chance to finish.” I feel Dean’s eyes on me but I don’t turn to look. I lean in toward Elly a little. “Would you like to help us finish?”

“Sammy…”

I look over at Dean, determination set in the curve of my smile. “Dean, didn’t you say you saw some boxes marked ‘Christmas decorations’ back in the store room?”

Dean is just looking at me, a little dumbfounded, a little disbelieving, a little hopeful. He smiles sheepishly at me after a moment. “Actually, I was only joking, but…”

I lift an eyebrow. 

“I did get a few things the other day,” he finishes quietly.

“I just knew there was more in those bags than lights,” I chide him. 

He grins at me and dries his hands and takes Elly’s bowl and spoon. “Come on, Elly. Lets go see what we’ve got to liven up that tree.”

She smiles and takes his offered hand. As Dean walks off with her, he casts a look over his shoulder, it looks a little grateful but a little sad, too, and I’m not sure why that pulls so hard at my heart. I get up and follow after them.

It turns out Dean bought more than a few, and they mostly consist of an array of multicolored glass balls, and some glitter laden snowflakes, along with some blue plastic icicles. I ensconce myself on the cough again and watch as Dean sits in the middle of the floor amid his collection of haphazard boxes and hands the ornaments one by one to Elly who meticulously and with great thought places each and every one. At the front of the tree. No higher than three feet from the ground.

Dean smiles and laughs as she narrates in detail her well organized plan of alternating colors while she hangs each ornament. There are candy canes, too, and Dean unwraps two and they continue hanging candy canes and icicles while they suck and slurp on the peppermint treats.

Finally, Dean hands Elly one last ornament and whispers something in her ear. Her gaze slides to me a little uncertainly and then she shrugs and comes over with a large gold star held between her hands. She offers it out to me. 

“Help put it at the top of the tree?”

I start a little at the request but unfold myself from the couch after a moment’s pause. She holds up her arms, and I tentatively lift her up into the air. She points to the top of the tree, and I get her in reach and then she leans out over the branches and positions the star with great care a little lopsidedly at the top. 

“Perfect,” I whisper to her when she looks back to me for approval of a job well done. She grins wide and brilliant then and throws her arms around my neck, kissing my cheek. 

My eyes go wide and dart to Dean who is sitting on the floor, arms spread across the length of the couch cushions, smiling up at the two of us with that sad, grateful look in his eyes again. I frown for a second, but he gives a little shake of his head and turns to examine Elly’s handiwork with the tree.

“I think it’s missing something,” he says, and I can hear mischief in his tone.

“What?” Elly asks. Her little brow is pulled tight in a frown as she tries to puzzle out what Dean means.

Dean grins as he gets up and heads to the kitchen. 

When it’s apparent he isn’t immediately returning, Elly wiggles a little in my arms and I set her down. She crawls up on the couch in the warm corner where I had been and tucks her knees up under her chin and sits wistfully staring at the tree. After a minute she looks at me quizzically as if to ask why I haven’t joined her. I sit down at the other end and she scowls at me for a second before crawling over to lean up against my side. 

My heart wrings out in my chest, and I have to catch my breath before I drop a careful arm loosely around her shoulders. She sighs in contentment and smiles up at me and for a split second I’m wondering what there is on this earth that I wouldn’t do to keep her safe and happy and smiling just how she is now.

“What did you ask Santa for for Christmas, Sam?” Elly asks.

I’m taken aback again by her candor and have to stop and think. 

“I didn’t—I didn’t really ask for anything,” I stammer.

“What would you, if you could?”

I look down at the top of her blond head, settled in against the crook of my shoulder, and I have to put a hand over my heart because it suddenly feels like it’s going to come out of my chest. 

“Sam?” Dean is standing in the door with a big plastic bowl, concern all in his eyes.

I look up at him. I know my face must be open and ragged and written over with this overwhelming feeling in my chest, but I don’t have any words for it.

“Sam, are you all right?” Dean is across the room and beside me in a heartbeat, his hands warm against my face as he takes it between them and turns me so he can see into my eyes.

I clear my throat, nod at him, because I really can’t do anything else. I can’t possibly explain to him this piercing pain in my chest that feels so intense and so sweet that I could die from it. “I’m fine,” I say a little shakily. “Really.”

Dean looks doubtful but lets it go, caressing my cheek with his thumb as he leans back and lifts the bowl which smells of freshly popped corn into the air. Elly lifts a dainty brow.

“Garland,” Dean says with a grin. “Can’t have a tree without popcorn garland.”

Elly bounces off the cushion beside me and sits down cross-legged at my feet while Dean slides off onto the floor to sit with her and begin the slow process of threading each individual fluffy kernel on the needle and thread that I’m pretty sure came out of our first aid kit.

After a few minutes, she holds up her needle and a piece of popcorn, tongue still stuck out the corner of her mouth in intense concentration and says to me, “Want to try?”

I glance at Dean who’s stilled from threading his own long strand to watch me, and I see that look in his eyes again and feel that funny twist around my heart that says there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep Elly from being disappointed. I take the needle in my fingers and deftly stick the kernel and thread it. Elly hands me another while she pops one in her mouth, and I thread it, too. We go on like this, Elly handing me kernels and alternately eating them while she watches my fingers manipulate them down the thread until the bowl is empty and Dean finally calls a halt.

We wrap the tree in yards of popcorn and Dean declares it a success as Elly claps her hands.

There’s a clanging at the front door.

Dean glances at his watch and his smile slips a little. “Must be Mindy. She said she would try to be here by five.”

“Oh,” I say.

He answers the door and sure enough it is Mindy. She looks harried and sheepish and apologetic as she tries to hustle Elly into her coat.

“Aunty Min, we decorated the tree!” Elly says excitedly, too busy miming out her excitement to put her arms in her coat sleeves. “And Sam made me grilled cheese for lunch. Extra cheesy!” 

She beams at me, and I smile back.

“Thank you so much, guys,” Mindy says. “Really. I’ll pay you back.”

Dean scowls at her. “Forget it. It was our pleasure.”

“She was an angel,” I add.

Mindy looks a little askance at me. “Okay. Well, I’m glad she behaved for you. Shall we go, Elly?”

Elly tugs at Dean’s jeans pocket again. “Can I come back? I had a lot of fun today.”

Dean hunkers down at her eye level. “Well, we’re fresh out of trees to decorate, but I imagine we can find something to do.” Elly grins and Dean stands up. “Honestly, Mindy, any time you need some help. Just bring her by.”

Mindy stares at Dean a little like he’s grown a second head and then looks back to me. I just shrug easily and keep smiling. She shakes her head. “Well, actually, I have some deliveries to make the day after tomorrow and my mom has appointments that day…”

“Sure,” I chime in. “Bring her by. I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”

“Nope,” Dean confirms.

“Okay…okay. Well, thanks again. A lot.” Mindy finally gets Elly zipped into her coat and her mittens on her hands. “Let’s go, bug. Sam and Dean have stuff to do this evening, I’m sure.”

Elly waves over her shoulder and then through the rear car window all the way down our road as we stand in the frigid evening air watching them go. 

Dean glances down at my sock feet. “Get inside, Sam, before you get sick again.” He gives me a light shove, and I obediently go.

We gravitate into the kitchen and Dean puts on a fresh pot of coffee and leans on the counter looking at me. “You did good today, Sammy.”

“Huh?”

He crosses his arms and gives a one shoulder shrug. “I know I kind of sprang that all on you, and the whole decorating thing—.”

“It’s okay,” I say quietly. “I had…a good time.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

We stand in the silence. The coffee perks and Dean pours two cups, adding peppermint creamer to mine and handing it over slowly. “Sammy, I really wish…”

Dean’s voice is low and graveled and straining with emotion that I know he can’t verbalize, but I think I know what it is he wants to say. His eyes have been saying it all afternoon.

“Dean, it’s fine. You did the best you could. You were a kid yourself. You tried—really hard—and it wasn’t really your fault. It was me. I just…didn’t get it,” I finish for him.

He nods a little, like I’ve hit the nail on the head. “I wanted that magic for you, Sammy. I really did. I’d have done anything to keep you from the dark.”

His eyes are shadowed and lost looking into the past, and the lines a the corners are etching deeper and deeper with tension. I come around the counter and pull him to me. 

“You did keep me from the dark, Dean,” I whisper into his hair. “You’ve always been standing right between me and that abysmal pit, my shield and armor against the evils of the world and then some. Don’t ever think I didn’t know it. I might never have had the advantage of all those illusions most other kids have, but you kept me from being swallowed up by what was out there.”

Dean drops his head onto my collarbone and rolls it side to side. “But the simple things, Sam…the make-believe that all kids get to grow up with…”

“You didn’t have it either, Dean. Not for very long, anyway.” I stroke the back of his neck, kneading at tightened muscles. “And, honestly, it was harder on you. You’re the one that had it all ripped away from you. You were the one that had to face the realization. I never had that curtain to walk through in the first place.”

He concedes with a small nod. “It was all right, though, Sam. Because it was for you. I had to know what was really out there. I had to be prepared so that I could keep you safe.” He looks up at me. “That was what kept me going, Sam. Always kept me going when I thought I had to give up or die.”

“Jesus, Dean…” My eyes are stinging and I yank him hard against my chest and press my mouth against the short soft hairs at the side of his head, feel his breath warm on my neck, and I know suddenly what that feeling was that kept him going. It was what I felt when I looked at Elly. That pure, simple knowledge that I would bend the laws of the universe to keep the dark from closing in around her.

“Dean, do you think…? I mean, the way it was with Elly this afternoon…” I’m lost trying to find words to fit the idea that’s roughing itself out in my head. An idea that I don’t think I knew was there until just a few weeks ago, and I’m not sure at all is safe to think too hard about. 

Dean presses up to kiss me. “Yeah. Yeah, Sam. I know, and…I don’t know. Maybe.”

We leave it at that, the idea diaphanous and fledgling and tender in the space between us, too fragile to touch yet with words or serious intent lest it dissolve back into the empty spaces of our hearts that gave birth to it. Dean takes my hand and leads me back toward the bedroom, eyes gentle and soft with wanting and need, and I know it’s forgetfulness that we both want. Just for now.

Just for a little while.


	8. December 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one got away from me. Really, Seriously. Far away. It just got up and bolted, so, sorry, but hope you enjoy anyway.

The air is crisp and cold as we drive back toward the bunker. Evening is setting in. We’ve just come back from Mindy’s house, dropping Elly off after an afternoon of paper chains and present wrapping. 

Mindy had been a little harried and running behind on her Christmas preparations for her customers, and Dean had offered to take the box of small gifts and wrapping paper and get the job done for her while we watched Elly for the afternoon. So, Elly and I sat on the couch in the den and did paper chains in green and red and gold and added them to our tree while Dean wrapped boxes with a dexterity that honestly surprised me since I’d not ever gotten a gift from him that wasn’t wrapped in old newspapers or a paper bag with an overabundance of Scotch tape. When we were done, Elly asked for some Christmas music, at which point Dean tensed a little, eyes skittering to mine, but I just shrugged, and Elly commandeered my computer and created a playlist of songs that were appearing in her church pageant on Christmas Eve. 

“Will you come and see me?” she asked while concentrating on dragging a song to her newly created list. 

I blinked, speechless. Dean met my eyes, and I couldn’t quite decipher the look there, but I was suddenly very sure that it was important to him that we say, ‘yes,’ so I gave a little nod in agreement despite the small knot in my stomach.

“Of course, we’ll come see you, Peanut,” Dean answered, and Elly clapped her hands and threw her arms around Dean’s neck in her happiness, and I told myself that any discomfort I felt was worth the look on Dean’s face as he hugged her back.

I’m still feeling a little uneasy about the decision, though, as Dean drives us home. The windows are cracked, letting in the fresh air despite the chill, and I’m rummaging in his tape box to keep from brooding at the passing landscape.

“Sam, you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Dean is quiet for another half mile. I continue to flip through old, battered and cracked cassettes, half of which won’t even play anymore. Finally, he sighs.

“Dude, seriously. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I say with an innocent spread of my eyebrows. “I’m good.”

Dean puts his hand across the seat, squeezes my knee. “Sam, you did good today. Really good.”

I give him a quick smile. “It was fun.”

He quirks his lips at me. “Yeah, about as much as getting a fingernail pulled by a jealous Hold Nickar while wearing a meadowsweet necklace.”

I grimace at the old memory of that particularly shitty Christmas. It’s not on my favorites list for the obvious reasons that it’s never a good time to almost get yourself sacrificed to a pagan deity during the holiday season and also because it was Dean’s last Christmas before going to Hell and probably one of the worst times of my life. I shudder involuntarily. 

“Not that bad,” I say. “Definitely not that bad. I’m…actually kind of enjoying it.”

Dean’s eyebrows climb high, and he stares at me for a second. “Seriously?”

I give a one shouldered shrug. “Seriously. I dunno. Maybe it’s Elly.”

Dean smiles tenderly. “Yeah, she’s a real sweet kid, huh?”

“Yes. Very.”

I continue flipping idly through cassettes.

“But something’s still bothering you, Sam. What is it?”

I sigh and pull out a particularly beaten up tape and hold it up to the dying evening light, squinting at the label. “It’s nothing really. I guess I’m just a little nervous about the church thing.”

“Really? You used to love churches.”

I cast him a sidelong look. “Yeah, until I tried to cure a demon in the ruins of one and damn near died doing it.”

Dean hissed a breath through clenched teeth. I know from the sound that he’s cursing himself inwardly for forgetting something so obvious. I cover his hand on my knee and squeeze it tightly. “It’s okay, Dean. I’m just not…thrilled about the idea of going in them anymore. That’s all. But it’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. Elly doesn’t need to pay for the baggage I carry around.”

We fall silent again, and I scrub a layer of road film off the tape with my thumb in an attempt to read what’s left of the faded label. I still can’t make it out, so I stick it in the player.

Vaguely familiar strains come out of the speakers, and I frown trying to lay my finger on the song. It’s not one of Dean’s staple music selections, and I can’t remember it ever playing in the car while we were on the road. 

_The sound of one man walkin’ through the snow can break your heart,_

_but stopping doesn’t help so on I’ll go, and Christmas Eve can kill you when—_

Dean’s hand snaps out and hits the eject button on the player. 

“Dean?” I frown in concern. “Everything okay?”

The song doesn’t spark any memories for me. I think maybe Dad used to play it a long time ago, but I don’t really remember the words. Apparently, Dean does. I pluck the tape out of the deck and squint at it again. I can just make out ‘Xmas’ in Dad’s sharp, angular handwriting now that I know what some of the content is.

“I just…don’t like the song.”

Dean’s voice is rough, and I can hear pain hiding way back in it. I toss the tape back in the box and shove it under the seat, then reach across and brush his thigh with my hand. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

He glances over at me, eyes full, and my heart flips in my chest. My fingers tighten on his leg. Something has triggered a bad reaction, and I can’t begin to put my finger on what nerve those few eery strains of steel and acoustic guitar could have hit with my brother. 

“Jesus, Dean…”

He covers my hand, squeezes hard. “It’s okay. I just…can’t listen to that anymore.”

“Why?” I probably pushing, venturing into territory that I should leave well enough alone, but it isn’t often Dean reacts so strongly to random things like this, and it worries me.

He sulks, pressing himself down in the seat, and I feel him pulling back. Whatever it is, it’s strong enough to reach out of the past and grab him, but it’s not something he feels like I’ll understand. That hurts a little—that there’s still something between us that he doesn’t feel like he can share. I know we both still have our sore spots, the things we don’t like to talk about—like my dislike of churches after my attempt to close the Gates of Hell by curing its king of his demonic soul with a cracked and broken visage of the  mother of God leering down at me as though my attempts were futile and no matter what efforts or sacrifices I ever made, my own soul would never be clean enough to earn a place among the blessed.

There were a thousand things like that between us and any one of them could be the cause of Dean’s reaction, but it worries me he feels he can’t…or won’t share it.

“The first Christmas you were at Stanford…” Dean pulled his hand from beneath mine, squeezed it and held it to his leg. I could feel tremors running up and down his arm and his thigh muscles were twitching under my palm. “I…went a little nuts.”

His fingers twitch on the back of my hand, and the memory of whatever he’s done flinches around his eyes. 

“Nuts?” I ask carefully.

He swears softly and keeps his eyes steadily trained on the road in front of him. “You didn’t—you weren’t—.” He falters, swears again, takes a steadying breath to continue. “You didn’t even call, Sam.”

I remember that first Christmas. I was still heartsore after the way Dean and I had left each other. In my childish anguish I had expected him to beg me to stay, or at least to be so furious that he raged against my leaving which would just have been another way of him begging me to stay. But he hadn’t done that. He’d just looked at me when I finally told him, just looked at me from the doorway where he leaned, watching me stuff everything I owned into my old duffle bag, tears streaming down my face, and hadn’t said a word. He never said a word. He eventually nodded, just once, like he’d made a decision and then turned and walked out of the house.

I didn’t see him again for more than two years.

“Dean…I…” I stumble a little. What can I say to make anything about that night, or the years that followed any better? Is there anything, or is my being here right now, all that needs saying. I fight to loosen my tongue and get the words out. “I couldn’t call. I wanted to. God. _Really_ wanted to. But I would have broken, Dean. The second I heard your voice, I would have cracked and come running back to you, and I couldn’t do that. I’d been under your wing and in your shadow all my life, and I couldn’t keep hanging onto you, expecting you to protect me and take care of me. I had to stand on my own.” I smile ruefully and look down at our joined hands. “Turns out that really didn’t work out so well, but…I had to try.”

“Jesus, Sam…” Dean sucks in a quick breath, to stifle a sob maybe.

“I’m sorry, Dean. I know. It’s too little too late, and I can’t make up for it…except by being here. Now.”

“I know, Sam. I know.”

I sit silent in the growing twilight as we drive because he still hasn’t explained what the song had to do with my leaving. I finally have to prompt him. “Dean…what did you mean when you said you went a little nuts?”

He’s quiet for so long that I don’t think he’s going to answer me, and as I’m about to pull my hand back, he speaks in a tight, low voice,

“I wanted to come see you.”

My jaw falls open but I make myself stay quiet and listen.

“I tried to get Dad to come with me. Told him you were family, and we should be together at Christmas, no matter how mad he was at you. Family was all that counted, and we were all you had.” He sucks in a shaky breath. “He reminded me again that it was you who did the leaving and obviously you didn’t consider yourself part of the family any more.

“I got mad at him. Real mad. I…hit him.”

“Oh my God…” I know my eyes have gone round and wide because I could never imagine Dean going up against Dad, not after all the times he spent defending him, and mostly to me.

“I stormed out, disappeared for a week, got on the trail of an ice wraith up north near the Canadian border. I went after it. Alone.” I flinch because ice wraiths are nasty, vicious, fur and scale covered creatures with claws up to six inches long that live in the northern wilds and drink human blood; but like a Djinn, they do it slowly, keeping the victim alive for days, paralyzed but conscious just waiting in terror to die.

“I wasn’t thinking straight, and I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been,” he continued. “It was just a good thing Dad was only a day behind me. I got stuck in a snowstorm. I was half frozen and probably suffering from hyperthermia, and the wraith was coming down on me when he showed up and torched the damn thing.” He shuddered at the memory, and at the memory that had caused him to go out in the northern wilds on such suicide mission in the first place. “It took a good month before I was road ready again.”

“Dean…I didn’t know.” I lean over until I can drop my forehead to his shoulder. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He shrugs a little. “Because I was weak, Sam. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I shouldn’t have been so stupid and needy. You weren’t doin’ anything wrong by leaving. I was…proud of you for getting out, for getting away, because I knew I never could. You were strong, and I’d made you that way, and I knew you’d be fine. You didn’t need me anymore. I’d made sure of that. It’s what I wanted…

“But then you left, and I found just how much _I_ needed _you_. I was desperate, Sam. I was crazy with missin’ you, and it made me sick to think how disappointed you’d be to find out how weak and pathetic your big brother, who’d taught you the very foundation of ‘tough’, actually was.” He pauses a second. “Anyway…that damn song always reminds me of that Christmas, and I—I just can’t listen to it anymore.”

I give up any pretense of not outright hugging Dean, and slide my arms around his chest and burrow my face down between his shoulder and the seat back because his words are tearing at my heart, cutting into places that I thought we’d long since covered over and laid to rest years ago. My voice is muffled when I finally find it.

“I would never think you were weak. Or pathetic. Dean, you are the strongest man I know. You always have been, and…just because you ‘went a little nuts’ when I left?” I give a dry laugh. “Well, I’m actually kind of relieved.” 

He blinks in astonishment and I nod. “I needed you so much. Never stopped. I covered it over, and covered it up, and drown it down with Jessica, but it never went away, Dean. It’s never, ever gone away.” I lift me eyes and look up at him. “I tried so hard to be strong for so long because I thought that’s what you wanted from me.”

The Impala is drifting to the side of the road and slowing down and Dean is putting her in park and wrenching me around and toward him, arms locking so hard around my chest that I can barely breath. His face is hot and wet in the curve of my neck, and I can feel his whole body spasming as he lets go—lets it all go. Years of resistance and pain that’s been curled up and burning in his gut, slow and painful, killing him more surely than any bullet, set of teeth or claws, or Mark of Cain ever could have.

The sun has quit the horizon and the sky has gone cobalt by the time he shifts enough to whisper against me. “Jesus, Sam. You gotta not do this to us on the road anymore. Can’t fucking see to drive.”

I laugh, edged in hysterical relief, and feel him press his lips against my throat. My whole body shudders, and I turn my head to reciprocate the kiss, nuzzling at his jaw. I’m still smiling, and if anyone could see, it would probably scare them. Even I can feel the maniacal edge in it, the insanity that is us and our love for each other bleeding through.

Surely there has never before been any two people in history who have loved so much and so deeply, to go to the ends of the earth, to Heaven, and to Hell in their name, and come back each and every time, called home by the same love for which they sacrificed every atom of their being and thread of their existence. 

That kind of insanity only happens once, and it takes much more than the mere alignment of planets to create. It takes the alignment of power across the ages and universe…and ‘soul mates’ doesn’t even begin to touch what it is.

I press my forehead into Dean’s temple and my lips to the corner of his mouth. There is still the salt of tears lingering there. I kiss them away and whisper,

“Let’s go home, Dean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song lyrics referenced in this chapter are from "Christmas Eve Can Kill You" by the Everly Brothers. One of the saddest Christmas songs I've ever heard...


	9. December 21

I stretch long and slow, muscles unraveling from last night’s exertions. Dean tends to get violent and energetic when he’s emotionally high strung and feeling desperate, and we were both feeling a little desperate last night after having unearthed those long buried memories. 

Dean is not in the bed with me. He’s somehow gotten into the habit of getting up earlier than me over the last few years. Never thought I would see that happen. I roll out of bed and reach for a t-shirt and pants. The bare floor is frigid under my feet so I go to rummage for a pair of socks and find…

“Damn it, Dean…” I shake my head, but I’m smiling. There are about twelve pairs of green and red and white striped socks in my sock drawer. “Honestly, such a child.”

But I’m not really irritated, the Christmas pranks have kind of grown on me, along with the strings of lights that appeared down the hallways running off the library after I acquiesced to decorating the tree and the extra paper chains that got hung over the kitchen and den doors after Elly and I had finished them yesterday afternoon.

I automatically open Dean’s drawer to get a pair of his socks—serves him right that my big feet with stretch them out—but then think, what the hell? I shrug, grab a pair of the atrocious green and white striped socks and pull them on, then go in search of coffee and breakfast.

As I near the kitchen, I can hear Dean’s voice drifting down the hall,

“Yeah, no, I realize it’s a long shot…Yes. Yeah, I think we really want to try for it.”

He must be on the phone because I don’t hear anyone else in the room with him. He sounds…anxious, and it makes my chest tighten a little. 

“I don’t know…No, Sam wants this,” he continues. “I want it for him. For me, too…Thanks. Thanks a lot. We really appreciate this, Linda….Yeah, talk to you soon.”

Linda? As in Linda Tran? I frown. Why would Dean be talking to Linda? I know we call every once in a while to check up on Kevin—a case of spirit haunting that still amazes me, since he’s never shown any inclination toward becoming vengeful and ghost crazy like most spirits we’ve encountered—but I can’t imagine what would have prompted such a call this morning. 

I realize I’m loitering at the door eavesdropping, so I round the corner when I hear the phone laid down on the table.

“Morning.” I yawn for effect.

Dean momentarily looks like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, cheeks going slightly pink. “Hey.”

He hands me a cup of coffee, still steaming, and for just a second I wonder if he knows I was outside the door, or if he’d just poured it for himself. There’s peppermint creamer in it.

“You know, I’m going to get spoiled with you getting up early and getting the coffee going,” I say with a smile.

He shrugs and turns back to the carafe, pouring himself a cup. He’s sullen and a bit timid which is not Dean at all, but I’m afraid to press. I put him through enough last night. So, I lean back in the chair at the counter island and put my feet up on the edge, prominently displaying my new socks. When he turns back from the counter, he doesn’t notice right away which tells me he’s definitely preoccupied by something. I want to ask what it is, but I can also see the preemptive defensive tightening around his mouth, and the last thing I want is a fight. 

I wiggle my toes and clear my throat. His eyes dart to me, spy the socks, and the corner of his mouth twitches upward toward a smile.

“Found those, huh?”

“Uh, yeah.” I give him a good eye roll just for effect. Except that it has little effect. I set my coffee down, and lean forward. “Dean, what’s up? I heard you talking to Linda.”

His eyes go wide. “You did?”

I back pedal a little. “Only that it was her you were talking to. Just heard her name. How’s Kevin? Is everything all right?”

Dean avoids my gaze. “Kevin’s fine. I just called to…wish her a Merry Christmas.”

That’s a lie—I can always tell by the way Dean’s eyes shift to the side—but I let it go. 

“So,” I draw the word out. “What do you want for Christmas?”

Dean’s shoulder’s twitch, and his gaze bounces to mine for half a second and then back to his coffee cup. He forces a smile. “Nothin,’ Sammy. I got everything I need,” he looks over at me, face softening, “right here.”

I smile back, blushing probably because it makes my chest go all warm every time Dean gets tender like that. “Yeah. Me, too.”

He comes over the counter, sits down across from me. “Seriously, Sam. No gifts, okay? That’s not—not what it’s really about.”

“I know,” I say automatically, like a kid who’s been reminded not to be too greedy about his gifts. “I just… I just want you to have something, I guess. After you’ve gone to all this trouble with me.”

“Sam…” Dean pushes his cup away and leans across the counter, taking one of my hands. “Hey, kiddo, listen to me.” My face colors a warmer shade of pink at the childhood endearment. “It’s no trouble. It isn’t now, and it never has been. We’ve covered this, right?” I nod. “So, when I say you’re enough…I mean it. With everything I am.”

I nod again, lump in my throat. He’s looking at me, a little expectantly, like he’s waiting for me to reciprocate something, but I’m not sure what because I feel that way about Dean every day of my life—always have. There’s no difference today from any other day; no difference that the season has on the intensity of my love for him. 

He leans back, still looking at me. My fingers clench on his hand before he can pull away. “I know, Dean. I know. I just… ’Tis the season, right? I thought maybe I should get into the swing of things with a few gifts.”

Dean frowns and shakes his head, tugging his hand out of mine. “Sam—.”

“No, no. I mean—what about Elly? Maybe we should get Elly something?” I say quickly, feeling him shutting down on me.

He stops, tilts his head to the side. “That would be nice, yeah. She’d like that. I don’t think Mindy had much time to plan for her.”

I sigh a breath of relief. “Okay. So. I’ll go get a shower. We’ll go shopping. Good?”

Dean looks at me, seriously squinting for a second or two, then nods slowly. “Okay, kiddo. Get goin’.”

——

I’ve left on my striped socks, and they make me grin every time my pants leg rides up a little to reveal the garish splash of holiday color. Dean is a little more relaxed in the seat beside me as we drive into town, whatever tension he was feeling this morning pushed to the back of his mind.

“We need to stop at the book store,” I say.

“Bookstore?”

“Sure. She needs books.”

“Books?” Dean throws me a disgusted look. “What kid wants books? Toys, kiddo. She’s gonna want toys.”

“I loved books, Dean,” I say.

“Well, yeah, but you were a freak,” he replies with a grin. I reach across and smack him on the arm. “Okay, okay, we’ll stop at the bookstore, but we’re going to the toy store, too.”

“Of course, we are,” I say with a melodramatic sigh.

Dean looks thoughtful for a second. “What about a cat?”

“What?”

“She said she wanted a cat.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Maybe a stuffed one. I think Mindy might have something to say about an actual live cat, don’t you?”

He shrugs. “Probably right.”

We do stop at a used bookstore, and I go a little overboard with the books while Dean leans against a shelf, shaking his head at me and perusing a car magazine. 

I survey my stack at the register as the kind middle aged woman, who probably hasn’t seen a purchase this large go out her door in months, totals up the order. “Dean, do you think she’d prefer Lord of the Rings over the Chronicles of Narnia?”

“Dude, I think she’s a little young for either one, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, maybe. But if someone read them to her…I mean…I could read them to her.”

Dean looks up sharply, but his face goes soft in a second. “Yeah. I suppose you could.”

I nod absently and continue down my stack. “I couldn’t find the last book in the The Wrinkle In Time series.”

“Well, you have to leave something to get her next Christmas,” Dean says, going back to his magazine.

I look over at him, a thought suddenly occurring to me. “You think she’ll still be here?”

My heart flips over at the thought that her mother might suddenly appear and swoop her back to wherever she came from, and Dean and I won’t get to see her anymore. 

Dean looks back up at the note of anxiety in my voice. His smile is gentle and a little sad. “I don’t know, Sam. Maybe. Hopefully.”

I nod and pay the lady behind the register and pick up the bag of my small library’s worth of books, and we head back to the car.

The toy store is next, and it takes a little convincing to get Dean pointed away from the trucks and superheroes and toward the dolls and play kitchens.

“She’s a girl, Dean,” I say.

“I know! But she might  be a tomboy, you never know.” He grumbles as I drag him down the long isle of dolls and their infinite outfits. It’s truly a little daunting. “Any daughter of mine would want a monster truck for Christmas.”

I look over at him, slightly surprised. “And I suppose you’d teach her how to rebuild carburetor, too.”

“Of course! It’s something every girl should know how to do,” he says as he picks up a baby doll that touts being just like a real newborn in its weight and sounds it makes. “Really? Babies for babies. That makes so much sense.”

“It’s a girl thing, Dean,” I say.

We eventually compromise on a dress up doll that is almost half as tall as Elly and a monster truck rally set. At the check out, Dean picks up a glitter filled baton with bits of tinsel on the ends and spins it in his fingers much like he does with the wrenches he uses on the Impala. 

“What about one of these?” he asks, holding it up. “Kids love glittery stuff.”

I watch the baton spin, and a memory punches to the surface, almost making me choke. My eyes suddenly fill.

“Sam?” Dean drops the baton back in the bin and grips my arm. “Hey. Sammy? You okay?”

I take a breath, nod my head. 

“What happened, Sam? What’s wrong?” Dean takes the boxes from me and drops them on the conveyor belt and lets the girl ring them up, never taking his hand from my arm. He pays her, still holding onto me, and collects the bags and leads me out to the car. 

“Sam. Talk to me. You look like you saw a ghost. What’s wrong?” He opens the door of the car, sits me down, and hunkers down in front of me. “Sam?”

I stare at him. My hand comes up to rest on his chest, cupped a little to make room for something under it that isn’t there anymore. He glances down at my hand, frowns in momentary confusion, and then I see it…the moment he recognizes the memory that’s nearly driven me to tears. 

“Sam…”

I shake my head. That Christmas is one of the few I remember fondly, how Dean tried so hard to keep the illusion real for me for just a little longer. How he’s trying so hard to rebuild it now after all these years, trying to get back for me something he feels like I lost. 

“It was the baton, I think,” I mumble. “Because of those gifts you—.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I remember,” Dean murmurs. He’s covered my hand, flattened it against his chest. “Sam, I…”

“It’s okay, Dean. Please. I’m sorry. It was stupid. It’s stupid! I just…”

“Hey,” Dean puts a warm palm to my jaw. “Sam, it’s not stupid.” He presses against the back of my hand. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry for that. I can never make that up to you. No matter how hard I try.”

I shake my head again, tears are threatening at my lashes. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that. You have nothing to make up for. Nothing! Everything you’ve done, Dean…you tried so hard, and I…I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

“But then I threw part of us away, Sam.” His voice is crumbling, hand shaking where it’s still pressed to mine, against his heart that’s started to pound. 

I hook a hand at the back of his neck and pull him to me, burying my nose in his hair. “You didn’t throw us away, Dean. It was just a symbol.” I work my arm around his shoulders, hold him tighter. “It hurt then, yeah. Hurt like hell, and sometimes…” I drift off because I don’t want to admit to the sting of that memory, and I press my cheek to the top of his head. “But what matters is us, Dean. We’re okay now. And we don’t need any kind of symbol to remind us of it.”

He nods against my chest, pulls back a little and smiles weakly up at me. “We gotta quit this, Sammy. I don’t have the energy for it.”

I laugh a little. “Yeah, me neither.”

We disentangle ourselves with a few slow kisses and caresses.

“How ‘bout a drink?” Dean suggests. “I think we deserve it after all this hard work.”

“Yeah,” I agree.

We settle in at the local diner. I even indulge and have a cheese burger minus the extra bacon and a beer. We’re amiably stealing fries from each others plates when I ask,

“Did you ever actually think about having a daughter?”

Dean glances up. He takes another one of my fries and scoops up a glob of ketchup from my plate. “Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“What you said in the store, about any daughter of yours liking monster trucks and cars.”

“Oh.”

“Ever think about what it would have been like if Emma….?”

Dean groans and munches another of my fries. “Sam, let’s not go there. I think we’ve dredge up enough for the day, huh?”

I shrug. “I just wondered. I mean, I thought about it…with Amelia.”

Dean’s hand pauses over my plate. “You did?”

I nod. “I don’t think she was ready for it. Not then. Neither was I. But I could see it, imagine what it would be like.”

“Was it…nice?” Dean asks a little hesitantly. That tight hopefulness from this morning is back around his eyes again.

I nod. “Yeah. Yeah it was real nice. I guess spending all this time with Elly kind of reminded me.”

He takes a few more of my fries and a long swallow of beer. “What about a boy?”

“A boy? Sure, I suppose. I mean, really I would have been happy with either. Just the idea of a family…you know?”

I can see memories playing out behind Dean’s eyes, and I’m sure they’re of Lisa and Ben. He had that family that I had dreamed of, and he’d given it up…for me. He told me time and time again that it was to keep them safe, that making them forget him was the only way to protect them, but I knew in the end it was all for me. 

“I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t mean to dredge anything up.”

He takes another long drink of his beer, wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. “It’s okay, Sam. I still think of them. I do. I’ll never forget them. That would be a disservice to them, really. But it doesn’t hurt anymore, not like it used to. I’m okay with it. Ben’s strong and growing up good. Lisa’s happy.”

I know he checks in on them. The hunter community kind of keeps an eye on each other and the ones that mean the most to us, and Dean put the word out years ago that Lisa and Ben were to be protected, looked after. From a distance. Dean has never been back to see them that I know of.

“Are we okay, Sammy? Just us?”

I look at him, eyes wide and reach across the table to take hold of his hand and shake it a little in emphasis. “Of course, we are! Why wouldn’t we be?”

“I just thought…you’ve always wanted a family, Sam. You said you planned to marry Jessica, and you lived with Amelia for nearly a year and thought about having kids with her…” He gives a small shrug. “I guess I thought maybe we—I—wasn’t enough?”

I sigh heavily and squeeze his hand hard, enough that his breath catches at the pain, and I mean to hurt him, punish him a little for thinking something so stupid. “I thought we agreed not to do any more of this today.” I give him a good shake. “You are all that I need, Dean Winchester. That’s it. That’s all. Just you. Now. Eat your damn burger, drink your beer, and pay the check because we’ve got presents to wrap and deliver.”

“Yes, Santa,” Dean teases with a smirk.

I throw a french fry at him and grin.


	10. December 24

I’m still really uneasy about this whole church thing as I stand in front of the mirror and let Dean straighten my shirt collar, and not only because of my past less than savory experience in one.

“Dean, we’ve never actually _been_ to church a day in our lives. Don’t you think we might…?”

Dean gave my collar a final tug. “What? You think maybe Heaven will smite us, or something?”

I roll my eyes. “I was going to say, we might be being hypocritical, seeing as how we know that God’s not really home and couldn’t give a shit anyway.”

“So, then what’s to feel hypocritical about?” Dean slides into his sport jacket, and my breath catches in my throat as my gaze slides up and down his body in the mirror. It has been a long time since I’ve gotten to see him in a suit, and his shoulders still fill out the jacket just right. He’s left off his tie, and his top two shirt buttons are undone which makes him look…edible.

He snags my gaze in the mirror and smiles a little, eyebrows waggling in promise. “Sexy, huh?”

I smack him on the back of the head. “We’re going to church, Dean.”

“So?” He turns and slips his hands under my jacket and curves his palms over my hips bones, tugging me forward just a fraction. “Doesn’t mean I can’t look good for my baby boy.”

I dip my head to kiss him, gently, close lipped, keeping it chaste. I want more. God, I want more, but my nerves are doing a pretty good job of reigning in my libido at the moment, and Dean must be able to feel it because he pulls back just a little and moves one hand to cup my jaw.

“Sammy, relax. We’ve been to Heaven. How hard can church be?”

I roll my eyes again, my repertoire of reactions stunted by my anxiety. He lifts his other hand and frames my face, forcing my gaze to his. 

“Sam, I’m serious. This is no big deal, and if you really don’t want to go, we don’t have to go. No one’s holding a gun to our heads.”

I shift my weight from foot to foot for a moment, my mind latching hard onto his offer. I feel like I’m five again, faced with some decision that seems so awesome in nature that I can’t wrap my head around it, and I’m ill-equipped to weigh the pros and cons, and all I want to do is hide.

“Mindy’s expecting us.”

“She’s not going to hold it over you, Sam.” Dean tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “We’ll tell her I came down with that flu you had the other week.”

“What about Elly?”

Dean shrugs a little. “She probably won’t even know we’re not there. It’ll be fine.”

I can tell by the tiny pinch between his brows, though, that he’ll be disappointed not to get to see Elly in the pageant, and if I’m honest, I will be, too. The little scoot has found her own place tucked in right beside our hearts in the short time we’ve known her. Especially Dean. It still makes my heart ache to think about what he had to give up in Lisa and Ben. He very rarely talks about them, but there’s a picture of Ben tucked in behind Mom’s propped on his desk lamp, and I’ve seen him looking at it late at night sometimes when he thinks I’ve gone to sleep.

Dean was meant to be a family man. He has every quality a good Dad ought to have. He’s protective and loyal. He loves sports and being outdoors. He can fix anything, and he’s smart as a whip no matter what he thinks of himself. It may not be all book smarts, but that’s not always the important kind, either. At the same time, he’s tender and so good at taking care of any and every thing that arises. He’d make any kid the luckiest in the world to have him as a dad. Hell, I was. 

That thought brings tears to my eyes, and I suddenly realize in all the years we’ve been together, I’ve never thanked him for taking such good care of me all those years that Dad was here-again-gone-again. I lift my hands to cover his against my face. No time like the present. 

“Dean. Thank you,” I whisper. 

He brushes his thumbs under my eyes, catching the tears that are threatening before they can fall. 

“Hey…hey.” He looks a little bewildered by my sudden emotional break, but his voice is soft, tender in a way that I don’t get to hear very often. “Sammy…hey, you don’t need to thank me. For anything. Ever.”

“But—.”

“No.” He pulls me forward, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, planting a kiss in my hair behind my ear. “Sammy, you are…the love of my life. Ever since the first time you opened your eyes and looked up at me with those dimples, I was hooked in a hundred ways; and no matter how much shit we’ve been through, no matter the crap we’ve done and said to each other, that is never going to change. I am so grateful to have you, and everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done because I loved you, and you never, ever have to thank me for that.” He pulls back so he can look me in the eye again. “You, Sam Winchester, are my Merry Christmas, every day of the year.”

I am left utterly speechless by his words, but I can see his cheeks starting to color in the too heavy silence that's growing, so I make a show of knuckling away my tears and give a huge, dramatic sniff. 

"God, Dean, that was so... _pretty_."

He cuffs the side of my head gently, shoving me back half a step. "Shut up."

I laugh and loop my arms around him from behind when he turns to grab our coats and nuzzle his ear. "Love you, Dean."

He gives my arms a quick squeeze. "Love you, too, Sammy."

 

We do wind up going to church, and it’s a good thing, too, as Elly is standing outside in the crisp, frosty grass in her little black patent shoes, and gold tinsel halo and wings, and white angel robe. Mindy is calling to her from the door, trying to get her to come in from the cold when Dean scoops her up and carries her back into the warmth of the church.

“Dean! You did come!” She is all smiles as she throws her little arms around his neck and squeezes tight, setting her tinsel wings all askew. 

“’Course, I did, Peanut. Did you think we wouldn’t?” He sets her down and Mindy rights her wings and gives her a push toward the Sunday school rooms where the rest of the players are gathering. 

“Off with you! You know they’re here now. Get going!” Mindy shoos her off. 

Elly goes with an excited wave over her shoulder that Dean returns almost as enthusiastically. 

“Sorry about that.” Mindy smiles sheepishly and pulls her brightly colored woven shawl closer around her shoulders. She has what looks like gold tinsel strung in her dirty blond hair and there are tiny braids with little bells at the ends that tinkle just audibly when she moves her head. 

“She’s such a great kid,” Dean says, and I’m probably the only one who can here the wistfulness in his tone.

“Sam, you feeling better?” Mindy asks me.

“Absolutely. All better.”

“Sure? You look a little green yet.”

Dean grins and pulls his attention back to me. “Sam, thinks we’re gonna get smited--.”

“Smote,” I correct him automatically.

“Whatever.” Dean elbows me. “He thinks we’re going to be _smote_ for only coming to church on Christmas Eve and only because we were asked. It really wasn’t our think when we were young.”

Mindy flaps a dismissive hand and pulls a face. “Oh, Sam, don’t be ridiculous. You of all people should know better. And besides, church isn’t just about God and religion. It’s—.”

But the organ starts playing then and she doesn’t get to finish whatever it was she was going to say. I cling to Dean’s elbow, keeping my hand out of sight in the folds of his suit coat as we file into the sanctuary.

 

The service is short, the pastor keeping his sermon light but expressive and letting the pageant take center stage. Elly is perfectly darling as the littlest angel, and I am very glad I decided to come and see her by the time she has finished singing her solo verse of _Little Town of Bethlehem_ in near perfect pitch. I twine my fingers with Dean’s between our thighs on the pew bench and squeeze. He squeezes back, and I see the light reflect in his eyes before he casually swipes at them with his free hand.

We pass up communion. I can’t bring myself to participate in that farce. And if it isn’t a farce, then I can’t allow myself to be the hypocrite asking forgiveness for sins that can’t even be enumerated much less forgiven, knowing that I would commit them all again if I had to. I think Dean might have gone up—maybe he did with Ben and Lisa all those years ago—but he stays behind with me in the pew, watching as people file by us.

It’s at the end of the service when they turn down the lights and candles are passed all around and the organist starts in on the earnest tones of _O, Holy Night_ that I start to feel the pressure in my chest. It’s just a pinch at first, just a little discomfort; but as the song goes on and voices around me rise in harmony with each other, it turns into real pain. It’s not like something’s pressing in, like a weight that I can’t get air past; it’s more a pressure from inside, like my heart is getting to big for my ribs and crowding out my lungs. 

I fold an arm around my ribcage in an effort to hold myself together because I’m sure I’m going to burst open. The pressure is building, burning in my belly and forcing its way up my throat in what I know will be a sob if I let it out. My head is spinning, and I’m crying before I know it. It’s all I can do not to double over from the force of whatever _this_ is. 

The music goes on, the voices keeping singing, rising and falling, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard, not a sour note or uneven pitch among them. The pain gets sharper and more acute, and I feel like I’m going to shatter apart from whatever is pulsing through me. I pitch forward, hand locking on the pew in front of me. Dean looks at me, sharp and concerned, hands coming up to support me. 

“Sammy?”

I shake my head, barely able to force words past this terrible pressure inside me. “I can’t…I can’t!”

I lurch up from the pew and stumble my way down the side isle to the doors at the back that are standing open to let the cool night air into the crowded church. Dean is so shocked it takes him a full thirty seconds to get up and come after me, but I can hear him following, feel his desperate concern when he grabs my shoulders as I pitch myself at the railing, trying to hold onto anything that will keep me standing.

“Jesus, Sammy, what’s wrong?” Dean’s voice is panicked, and his fingers are leaving bruises on my upper arms. I can only sob, gasp for breath, and shake my head in complete bewilderment. The pressure is abating a little as the cold night air rushes down into my lungs, but my head is still spinning, and I’m feeling lightheaded. My vision is blurring at the edges and there’s a familiar roaring in my ears that I know comes just before I pass out. I fling myself into Dean’s arms and cling to him for dear life. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I feel like my insides are all going to pour out of my chest in tears. 

Dean grabs me and holds me tight and then tighter. “Christ, Sammy, please! Talk to me! What the hell’s going on?” His hand threads into my hair and curls there, almost as if to keep himself grounded against his own fear. “Please, Sammy, breathe. Just keep breathing, baby boy. I got you. It’s gonna be okay. I got you.”

He’s shushing me and rocking me back and forth in his arms like he did decades ago when I woke from nightmares that were only nightmares because my mother’s face was smiling so tender and kind and warm above me, and try as I might, no matter how far I stretched, I couldn’t ever reach her, and I woke up screaming and crying, clutching my chest, feeling like I would explode from the overwhelming love in her soft face that I wasn’t allowed to touch.

I gulp and choke on a breath. “Oh my god…!”

The revelation is punched out of me and my arms spasm around Dean’s neck. 

“Sammy?”

I go suddenly weak and noodlely in his arms, the pressure inside me effervescing into the night as this truth I’ve stumbled upon lodges in my brain. I drop my face into the crook of Dean’s neck and breathe deeply. He readjusts his grip, taking my weight higher against his chest, still holding me tightly. I can feel his heart thundering in his chest, his panic at my reaction still pumping through his blood.

“It’s okay, Dean. It’s okay.” I nuzzle even closer to him, suddenly not able to get enough of his scent and his warmth. “I—I get it now.”

“Get it? Sammy, what are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

I pull back a little and rest our foreheads together. The soft, low strains of _Silent Night_ are drifting out into the cold with us.

“I understand now, Dean. I get it.”

“Sammy, please…” Dean’s voice is strained and bound up in terror. I cup his face in my palms and kiss him very, very softly.

“It’s about _this_. Here. Now. It was never about Heaven or Hell, or angels or demons. It wasn’t ever even about God.” I kiss him again and press my nose into his cheek. He’s shaking now, shuddering with the adrenaline let down. “It’s about the _love_ , Dean, and the _hope_. That’s all that has ever mattered. That’s why they’re all here. They’re just coming together to feel that—the love and hope of each other and of life. _That’s_ what it’s all about. That’s what we’ve fought for.”

“Jesus, Sammy. Jesus…” His words run out, and if it’s possible, he clutches me tighter to his chest. His body is about to let the pent up fear out in the only way it knows how, and I catch his head against my shoulder as he drops it to hide the tears, scratching light and soothing at the base of his skull.

People are starting to file out of the church now, but if they see us tangled in each other in the shadows to the side of the door, they avert their eyes. The mood is generally subdued but there is a quiet, solid joy underneath it; a foundation mortared together with love built on the keystone of hope. As more and more people pour out of the church and gather together in their quiet communion, the pressure in my chest returns, but I finally recognize it for what it is: a pleasure so keen and sharp that it feels like pain. I press a hand over my straining heart and sigh deeply. 

Dean moves against me, finally regaining some of his composure. “Sam, you all right?”

I nod. “Yes. I’m okay. Really, okay.”

“Sam!” Elly barrels out the door, leaving Mindy behind with her coat held out and sighing in exasperation. She plows into my thigh, holding tightly. “Uncle Sam are you all right? Aunt Min said you were sick.”

I cup the back of her head in my palm, her soft blonde hair like cornsilk against my skin. Her cheeks are pink with the cold and her little brow pulled down in the most serious frown as she gazes up at me.

“I’m fine, Sweetie-bug.”

“Really, really?”

“Really, really. Promise.”

She smiles then and hugs my leg tight before finally obeying Mindy’s repeated attempts to get her into her coat. 

“It’s time to say good night, Elly,” Mindy coaxes.

“Merry Christmas, Sam! Merry Christmas, Dean!” Elly waves over Mindy’s shoulder as she’s swept up off the cold ground.

“Merry Christmas, guys.” Mindy smiles. “Remember. Dinner’s at three if you want to come. Offer’s open.”

Dean looks at me. I shrug a little. At this moment, all I want is Dean, as close as I can possible get him with no interruptions. 

“Thanks, Mindy. We’ll seriously consider it. You have a really good Christmas. You, too, Peanut!” Dean reaches out and ruffles Elly’s hair as Mindy turns with a smile and wave and walks off toward her car.

We stand and watch as people filter away in small groups. Families. Generations of them.

The hole in my chest that started as just that small pinprick a few weeks ago is feeling hollow and empty inside me, made bigger, I think, in the absence of that intense overflow of emotion inside the church.

Dean has his hands shoved in his pants pockets, leaning against the corner of the building, looking very GQ. His expression is two parts continued concern for me and one part wistful as he follows the dancing steps of giddy children prepared for the evenings festivities and a long night of anticipation of Santa and gifts, and sees the couples walking off arm in arm, young and old alike, whole families together, grandfathers toting toddlers on their shoulders, mother’s cradling infants to their breasts against the cold.

He lifts his chin a little. “It would be nice wouldn’t it, Sam, to be like that?”

I make a noncommittal sound in my throat. I don’t want to hurt Dean by making him think I need anything other than just the two of us to feel loved; and I don’t. I really don’t. But I can’t ignore the empty space in my chest either, the space that’s opened up and asked to be filled with something more because there is something more out there that I want. That I think we both want.

But it’s not for us. 

I settle my chin down on his shoulder and push my hands through the loops of his arms to link them around his waist. He lolls back against me a little. “We’re all the family we’ll ever need, Dean. Just you and me.”

There is a long pause before Dean agrees quietly, “Yeah. Just you and me.”

 


	11. Christmas Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas! (Or whatever respective holiday you do or don't celebrate! :))

_Sammy…_

_Hey, Sammy, wake up…_

_Sammy, come on! Come see what Santa brought…_

I hear an aborted whine in my sleep, and it brings me the rest of the way to consciousness, and I realize it was me that made the sound. I blink my eyes open slowly. The room is still dark. It’s always dark, really, but my internal chronometer tells me that it’s still very early in the morning. Dean is snugged up against my back, his hand wrapped around and resting over my heart.

“Sammy…” he mumbles sleepily as I shift a little and bring his hand up so that I can litter tiny kisses along his knuckles. 

I was dreaming, and though I can’t remember the specifics, I think it’s of a Christmas that never was, a Christmas that should have been, might have been, if our lives had not taken the turn they did. I turn my face into the pillow and draw in a deep breath against the flood of emotion that tries to push out of my eyes.

Dean is leaning up on his elbow, hooking his chin over my shoulder, bleary eyes coming into focus as his body interprets my breathing just like he always has since the day I was born. I know there is concern on his face without even looking.

“Sammy?”

I wipe my eyes against the pillow and turn over with a determined smile. “Merry Christmas, Dean.”

He frowns at me for a moment, but then seems to decide to push it away and leans down to kiss me softly. “Merry Christmas, Sammy.”

We lay in bed together for a long time, curled into each other, just enjoying breathing each other in and listening to the quiet, synchronized beat of our hearts in the silence. 

“Sam, you want some coffee?” Dean murmurs into the back of my neck, breath warm against my skin.

I nod and smile. “That would be nice.” He smiles, kisses my nose and rolls out of bed. I lean up as he leaves and pull my puppy eyes. “Peppermint creamer?”

Dean rolls his eyes, grinning. “I’ve created a monster!”

I laugh and throw a pillow at his retreating back.

We curl up in the den with our coffee, and Dean has unearthed a tray of tiny cinnamon rolls and some danishes from somewhere and set them out for us to snack on as we sit and look at the tree and warm our hands around our mugs. I’ve scooted into the corner of the couch and pulled my knees mostly up and Dean is stretched out down the rest of the length with one arm slung up over my thigh to prop him up. I card my fingers through his short hair absently and let my eyes and thoughts wander over the tree. 

“Do you remember any of the Christmases with Mom and Dad, Dean?”

He nods, cheek rubbing against my knee where he’s rested it. “A little bit.”

I wait for him to elaborate. “Tell me?”

He takes a deep breath, tilts his head back to look at me as if to be certain that I know what it is I’m asking for. “It’s mostly just bits and pieces, Sammy. You know, like a dream you can’t quite keep hold of.” I nod my understanding, but my eyes are expectant. I want him to try. He sighs and continues, “There aren’t any solid memories, not like vivid pictures in sequential order or anything. I remember the smell of cookies in the house—for days before Christmas. Mom would let me sit up on the counter and watch her mix the dough and roll them out, and I’d lick the batter off the beaters and the spatula. 

“There was light everywhere…Mom loved lights. She had garlands all over the house strung with little lights, and there were candles. Nights when I laid in front of the fireplace staring at the tree while she played Christmas music on the piano.” 

He stops for a minute, clears his throat and runs a hand down his face, I think maybe to wipe away tears. I rub the back of his neck and stroke his back, soothing but encouraging, too. 

“And there were the Christmas Eve walks like I told you about. I remember the cold on my face, but I was always so warm, looking at all the yellow and colored lights, and Mom’s smile as she hung onto Dad and we strolled the neighborhood.” He pauses again, and I feel a tremble run through him. “But I guess mostly, it was the sound of her voice…I don’t remember words, don’t know if she was talking to me or telling me stories or reading, but I remember the sound of her voice and how safe it always made me feel.”

He turns into me then, sitting up so he can get his arms around me. I hold him close and stroke and soothe and whisper to him while he steadies his breathing, and feel a little guilty for having pushed him into talking about it. 

We stay wrapped in each other for a long time, coffee cooling in our mugs, the silence cradling us just like we are each other until I see the corner of a wrapped package tucked far up under the tree.

“Dean?” I nudge him a little. “What’s that?”

He pulls himself into a sitting position and follows my gaze to the tree. His face colors a little. “A gift.”

“I thought we weren’t doing gifts?” I bristle just a little because he had told me we weren’t going to do anything like that and I was going to feel awful if he got me a gift and I had nothing for him. 

He holds up a hand, palm out to forestall my rebuttal. “It’s for both of us, Sam.”

He leans forward and fishes the package out from under the tree. It’s flat and light and a little bigger than the size of a piece of legal paper. I can’t even begin to guess what it might be. He offers it to me.

“Who’s it from?”

He shrugs a little. “Me.”

I scowl. “I thought you said it was for both of us.”

“It is,” he insisted, then sighs in exasperation. “Just…open it, Sammy.”

I pull at the paper slowly, feeling Dean’s eyes bore into the side of my face. The corner of a royal blue folder peeks out, thick, heavy weight card stock with a gold edging all around. I pull the paper completely off and I’m staring at a legal sized folder with the emblem of a law office on the front. _MacVarney, Fry and Associates._ I look at Dean, a querying brow lifting up high. He reaches over and flips open the cover, still watching my face avidly.

I look at the contents, not really seeing what they are at first until my eyes light on the word ‘adoption’ at the top of one of the very legal looking forms in the inside pockets. I blink then look over at Dean, my eyes gone huge and round.

He’s looking uncertain, timid again like he did the other day. Waiting.

I can hardly find the breath to speak. “Dean, is this…?”

His voice is soft, careful. “I thought…after seeing you with Elly, the way you were with her…and all the time we spent with her reminded me of how you were when you were little…” His thoughts are coming out all disjointed and in spurts, and my eyes are getting bigger and bigger as he’s talking, and a smile is spreading across his face as he watches my reaction. “Sam, I think you’d make a really good dad.”

The folder falls out of my hands as I launch myself at Dean’s neck, burying my face there and sobbing because my chest is so full I can’t do anything else. He holds me and rocks me and whispers to me,

“Sam, I know it’s a lot, but I think we can do it. If we can just get past the red tape. It’s a long shot, and I know that, that’s why I called Linda—.”

“This is what you were talking to her about the other day?” I blurt between hiccupy sobs of happiness. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. She got me the name of a lawyer that specializes in adoptions—difficult ones, which I definitely think we qualify as. It’s going to take a lot of work, Sam, it will, but…you and me? We can do anything, right?” He lifts me away, holds my face between his hands, brushes his thumbs against my wet cheeks. “Sam, you’ve got to quit crying, man. I’m gonna start thinking you don’t want to do this.”

But he’s smiling, and I cover his hands, grinning through my tears. “No. No! Dean, I—I don’t know what to say… This is the most amazing thing. I can’t even begin to…”

I’ve run out of words because there just aren’t any to encompass what I’m feeling, but Dean being Dean, having known me all my life, interpreted every sigh and smile and quirk with practiced accuracy, just nods his head.

“I know, Sam. I know.”

I pick the folder up from where it’s fallen and hold it open on my lap, stroking the papers almost reverently. The enormity of this gift still hasn’t settled in. The only thing I have in my head is spinning images of years of Christmases ahead of us with our daughter sitting gleefully at the tree in anticipation of the season; evenings at the kitchen table over dinner listening to ideas for science projects and prom dresses; afternoons of research in the library as I tutor math and english; lazy mornings in the garage with the Impala’s hood up as Dean makes good on his promise of teaching her how to take apart a carburetor and put it back together, wrenches spinning and gleaming in his fingers as he grins down in pride.

My head jerks up. “Dean?”

“Yeah, Sam?”

“Can we…can we have a girl?”

Dean shakes his head and grins. “Sure, Sam. Just promise not to spoil her too much and turn her into a science nerd, okay?”

I give him a gentle push. “You just promise to keep the shotgun handy for the all the boys who’ll want to date her and make good on teaching her how to dismantle an engine block.”

Dean throws his head back and laughs. My heart skips at the sound. I haven’t heard him laugh so open and free and loud in a very long time, and it rings and echoes back through the bunker. I set the folder open on the table at our feet and lean over to wrap my arms around Dean again.

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much, Dean.”

Dean ruffles my hair with a gentle hand, planting little kisses on top of my head, and tightens his arm around me. “We’re gonna be a family again, Sam. A _real_ family.”

I tilt my head up to look into his eyes. “Dean, we’ve always been a family. You and me. No matter what. Now…we’re just going to be a bigger one.”

Dean dips his head and kisses me. It’s soft, his lips molding and pressing so gently, moving over mine with a tenderness that brings tears springing back to my eyes. “I love you, Sammy.”

“Love you, too, Dean,” I whisper against his mouth.

He squeezes me tight. “Best Christmas ever?”

I nod. “Definitely. Best Christmas ever.”


End file.
